


Scenes From A Homeward Journey

by Britpacker



Series: A Narnian Summer [2]
Category: Chronicles of Narnia (Movies), Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Action/Adventure, Alternate Universe, Gen, Homecoming, Original Character(s), Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-21
Updated: 2018-10-09
Packaged: 2019-05-09 21:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 18
Words: 44,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14723816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Britpacker/pseuds/Britpacker
Summary: When Aslan grants an unexpected reprieve Lucy, Edmund and Eustace hurry back to re-join their ship.  Getting home proves to have its own share of hazards and adventures.





	1. Westward, Ho!

**Author's Note:**

> The Dawn Treader's prow is facing west for the first time in many months. Not everyone is as happy about this fact as might be expected...
> 
> I detested pretty well everything about that abomination of a film version (I own the opinion, nothing else), but due to its pervasive influence I have succumbed and given the Star's Daughter her widely-used name in place of the one I created in the first version of this story. Keynes, Poulter and Henley were terrific, but everything else...

That ceremonial solemnity which had attended the departure of Reepicheep could not, Lucy admitted to herself, have been long maintained. It lingered beyond her party’s returning; beyond the Mouse’s disappearance from the crest of a wave into nothingness. Then a great sigh, seeming to start in the very timbers of the Dawn Treader herself, rippled around.

The merest flicker of a glance was exchanged between two tall young men on the poop. Perhaps only Lucy spotted the minimal nod from Caspian in the instant before Drinian began bellowing the orders that would heel his ship around, so that for the first time in too many months the painted eyes of the dragon could stare westward. 

Toward Narnia. Toward _home_. 

And as the men leapt to their Captain’s command Lucy felt her heart lift, her spirits soaring to the masthead for sheer joy – and gratitude, for Aslan’s unexpected response to her desperate plea. 

_Let us see Narnia again, Aslan! Oh, please let us go home!_

Now, darkness had descended. The galleon lay becalmed beneath a black velvet mantle spangled with silver sparkles; stars so bright one felt one might easily reach up and seize them. The crew were gathered on the maindeck to sing, dance and make merry in celebration of journey’s end, while leaning against the poop rail with Caspian, Edmund and Eustace by her side, Lucy was left to ponder whether she had ever been happier in her life.

Through the evening she had watched the ship’s company sauntering about its business with new vigour. Men hummed through the most tedious of tasks; snatches of song caught, hanging in the air. The great raucous gust of Rhince’s laughter carried from stem to stern and even Drinian, swaggering about the decks with a constant smile, appeared to have cast off his responsibilities and have not a care remaining in the world.

Only one person, she considered, had any regret about turning back the way he had come. 

_Caspian._

“It’s done now, you know,” she said seriously, plucking at his shirt’s loose sleeve. “And you’ll be making the rest of us miserable when we’re all so happy! Stop it! Going to the World’s End might have been an adventure, but Aslan told you – and surely you’ll listen to _him_ if not to us! – you’re needed in Narnia.”

“A king is needed in Narnia,” he answered sourly. “There is no particular reason that king’s name should be Caspian.”

“No, except that the chap who swore a coronation oath four years ago happened to be called that,” said Edmund crossly. “Snap out of this mood, for goodness sake! It’s only a few weeks ago you were moping about with a bad case of homesickness, and now you’re acting as though you’d sooner not go back to Cair Paravel and all your friends!”

“Friends?” Caspian tested the word on his tongue. “Nay. A king has subjects: councillors and servants. He may have a faithful and obedient people, but – _friends?_ ”

“I can see one person who’d be hurt to hear you say that,” said Lucy very quietly.

They all followed her gaze to where Drinian sat perched on an upturned wine cask at the side of the maindeck, his warm baritone mingling with the rest of the company’s in the chorus of a shanty Edmund remembered from the days of the Four Sovereigns’ galleon Splendour Hyaline. Caspian’s petulant expression softened.

“Aye, there’s _one_ would be no less true were I plain Caspian the cottage-dweller,” he admitted. “Still, even that must change! Drinian has his delightful Daniela ashore. When he’s wed, what time will remain for an old ally?”

“You don’t believe that!” cried Eustace. Caspian shook his head, making his golden curls dance.

“It must be so, Eustace. I shall be more alone than ever.”

“Well, not while we’re still here!”

“And how long, Queen Lucy, has Aslan granted you? Nay. You will return to your own world, and I shall be alone. None would have mourned me so greatly, had I gone beyond the World’s End with Reepicheep.”

“You’re not going to be jollied out of this, are you?” Edmund refused to credit that a King of Narnia could behave so selfishly. “What about Trumpkin or Doctor Cornelius; or Trufflehunter; Glenstorm; or the Bulgy Bears! D’ you think _Drinian_ would ever have forgiven himself if you’d swanned off from _his_ ship, never to be seen again? That we – or any of the crew – would shrug our shoulders and say: oh yes, I remember Caspian, vaguely!”

“Right!” Eustace thumped the rail enthusiastically, then wrung his stinging hand in dismay. “Ow! Anyway Caspian, you’d better pull yourself together now because you’re _going_ back, whether you like it or not! Unless you’d prefer to stay on the Dufflepuds’ island and mope?”

“There is no cause to take so high a tone with _Us_ , Master Eustace.”

“There’s every cause! We’re not your subjects and we’ll speak to you how we jolly well like!”

“Ed!”

“Hush Lu, it’s got to be said; and who better to say it than one of the Ancient Sovereigns of Narnia? Drinian knows, doesn’t he? That you’re still sulking I mean? That’s why he’s down amongst the crew tonight, not watching the fun from up here as he usually would.”

“I ...” Caspian cleared his throat. “Perhaps he finds my determination to _desert_ this afternoon impossible to forgive.”

“ _He_ would never have considered it, no matter how grand the adventure.”

“No, Lucy.” Caspian knew his bottom lip was beginning to wobble. _Another unkingly act on a day of unkingly behaviour_ , he thought miserably. “Drinian would never leave any duty half-done! You saw how quick he was to support Rynelf’s bold contention that my actions might constitute the crime of desertion? In my heart I know – knew even then – that he was right.

“I _cannot_ abandon the vows of my coronation, no matter how onerous I might find them. I received those duties, and I’m honour bound to maintain them. And yes: I _do_ have true friends who would grieve for my loss. Forgive me!”

Before any of them could do any such thing he hurried on, knotting his fingers together in his agitation. The children could only stare, horrified by their usually serene friend’s distress.

“I realised today how I dread a return to the stern formalities of my life ashore, and is that not _cowardly?_ Aboard ship I’ve lived as one of a community: distanced by my crown perhaps, but with a liberty no King of Narnia before me ever knew. With this company have I experienced such wonders...”

“The memories of which will remain to bind us, Sire.” The rich, concerned voice made them all start. Eustace squeaked; Edmund jumped. Lucy’s hands flew to her throat, as if they could stop her shriek escaping.

“Goodness Drinian, must you _creep about_ so!” she cried. “I never even saw you move!”

“My apologies, Ma’am. I happened to notice Your Highnesses in conclave.” He had felt their eyes on him; felt the hairs at the back of his neck begin to prickle with the realisation that his master’s sullen ill-humour had refused to abate. “Your Majesty...”

“Nay, Drinian. ‘Tis Caspian among friends, remember that.”

“Aye. Caspian.”

The younger man choked off a sob. “You cannot forgive me, can you?” he wailed, visibly steeling himself for the blow. Drinian groaned, thrusting a hand back through his thick black hair.

“Hardly a matter of _forgiveness_ , as you call it but – yes, of course I can! I simply – hang it, Caspian! Do you think so poorly of your own, that you could abandon us so lightly? Do we – your _friends_ – mean so little to you?”

There was such pain in the usually confident Captain’s voice that it quite broke Lucy’s tender heart. “By the Lion, no!” cried Caspian, no less affected. “I spoke without thought - Aslan made me see...”

“Did you remain because he willed it, or because you heard the wisdom of what he said?” the other man asked bluntly. “For I’ll tell you plainly, as one that was your friend long before he became your subject: a reluctant king will be no true king at all for Narnia!”

Edmund wagged his head hard. Eustace, uneasy with emotional discourse, shuffled his feet and stared out to sea. Lucy wished she could make herself do the same.

“None of our appeals to duty moved you,” Drinian continued, softer now but with the same deep intensity. “Why, until Lucy spoke of the lady, the Star’s Daughter, there was naught could persuade you to reconsider!”

Caspian opened his mouth to argue, thought better, and closed it again. “He wasn’t thinking properly,” Eustace volunteered uncomfortably. The King sent him a grateful look.

“Indeed, I was not: that was my folly. I heard Aslan’s strictures, Drinian. In them I recognised all the truth of what you, Edmund, Reep and Lucy - aye, and Rynelf, who must be rewarded for his good service when the time comes – had said before. I am sorry, old friend! For weeks I dreamed of turning west, then the moment we came to do so I dreaded the day I must return to ruling a realm! There have been no burdens for me to shoulder aboard and that, I believe, has spoiled me.”

“You may assume some of mine, should you require practise in bearing ‘em,” the Captain quipped, much cheered by the hearty laughter in which Caspian readily joined. “You never regarded your duties in this light before – or if you did none of us, your Council, ever guessed!”

“No more did I, my Lord, until I experienced the liberation of this journey.” Caspian smiled fondly at his friend’s good-natured snort before a wisp of thought that had been floating around his head since he heard his own words of unofficial abdication found its way onto his tongue. “A- _hem!_ You recall what I said about the Inner Council selecting a new sovereign, had I not returned? Well: _one_ name would most assuredly have occurred to Trumpkin, the Badger and Cornelius! You know it, of course?”

“The name of one that could never in good conscience wear your crown, King Caspian,” came the short reply. “Hmm, I fancy there’s a breeze stirring. Ahoy, Rhince! Topmen aloft! Excuse me, Your Majesties. If there’s the smallest chance o’ the wind getting up, we’d best be prepared for it. Stand ready at the wheel, Erlian!”

“He’s off jolly sharpish,” said Eustace innocently as his three companions burst into laughter. “Oh, I _see!_ You were talking about _him_ weren’t you, Caspian? They would have considered _Drinian_ for the throne, if you hadn’t gone home!”

“The first nobleman of Narnia. Lord of our greatest province, and scion of a line as ancient as the House of Telmar itself. A man proven and practised in government, diplomacy and battle,” Solemn despite his sparkling eyes, Caspian counted off the salient points on long fingers. “True, there’s no blood connection to the old ruling House, but the only relations I have are the royal family of Archenland – out of the question – and a distant cousin: Isabella, the Duchess of Beruna. 

“Nay Lucy,” he added as her mouth opened, ready to form the obvious question. “The prospect of a ruling queen would cause no disquiet amongst our good people, but Isabella... she is of a retiring disposition, seldom venturing to court even now. Not a handful of Narnians know her true mettle! A nobleman of proven abilities would be the better choice should the Telmar line fail, and yes, Eustace. The instinctive response of the Great Council would surely be to present the throne to my Lord of Etinsmere.”

“He would hate it,” said Lucy with certainty. Edmund nodded. 

“I’ll say! Confined to the land, always feeling your shadow over him... and I suppose if it was offered, being the conscientious chap that he is, he might feel compelled to accept.”

Caspian rested his chin on steepled fingers, smiling softly to himself. “Indeed. Aslan reminded me that to follow my selfish desires was to _impose a terrible burden on one most especially dear to me_ : whom else could he mean but my oldest and most faithful friend? Now, I wonder if Rynelf can be spared to play for us this fine evening? My Lord Drinian! If it be permissible, might we not have music from our shipmate’s accordion as we sail? 

“I should like, I think, to hear a song of home: The Ballad of Beaversdam, perhaps? Come along Lucy! Edmund, you must recall it! Sing with the rest of us, it may make the hours pass more quickly. At your pleasure, Rynelf!”


	2. Of Courtships And Kings

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caspian said he wanted to see the Star's Daughter again. With a little connivance among his friends, he'll have his chance...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because it really would have been easier to ask that nice Magician to do all the dirty work with a wave of the hand, and yet they didn't...

“I don’t see why we can’t leave it until we reach the Dufflepuds’ Island,” Eustace panted, dropping his end of a large sea chest loaded with the galley master’s tools into the waiting boat with a groan of relief. “Coriakin seemed a nice enough chap; and there must be a spell _somewhere_ in that book of his for cleaning the barnacles from a ship’s keel!”

“Doubtless there is, young master.” The two sacks Drinian had been shouldering went over the starboard rail to be neatly stowed beside the chest by Rynelf. “But we’ve a full month’s sailing – with a favourable wind, which shows no sign o’ blowing yet! – to reach him. All right, men – shove off! One more journey will see her cleaned out.”

The Dawn Treader stood beached on a narrow spit of sand just off the coast of the Star Ramandu’s resting place: shorn of her sail and rigging; her decks bare save the last few carefully packed possessions of her crew. For several hours each day in her present position it would be possible for men to scrape and chisel right down to the base of her keel, chipping away the accumulated ocean debris acquired over almost a full year’s hard sailing. 

The rigging could be replaced; the sail strengthened with patching where it had chafed from rain, wind and the frequent reefings and furlings required by so much wildly changeable weather. In short, the whole ship could be scrubbed and refitted, ready for her long voyage home to Narnia. It sounded to Eustace like the most appalling slog.

Drinian, he was sure, was enjoying himself enormously.

“Besides,” the Captain added under his breath as the oarsmen strained and the laden boat splashed away. “What is there on the Dufflepuds’ island to amuse the King?”

“I like the way _he_ gets out of all the work!” Eustace grumbled, dashing his damp brow. “Yakking about Narnia to the Star’s Daughter while we slog ourselves to death!”

“Lucy thought...” Edmund began, stopping to fix their friend with a very hard stare. “Oh, _you_ think so too do you, Drinian? Caspian’s rather taken with the lady, isn’t he? That’s as much why you’ve decided to overhaul the ship here! So he’s got time to – to...”

“Court the lady? Aye, King Edmund, that was my thought: though the ship’s in urgent need of a proper refit, and I’d sooner trust good, solid Narnian labour than any magician’s tricks, however kindly he may seem!" His candour earned a laugh, in which Drinian readily joined. "Argoz and the rest will keep the King safely occupied on shore; the lady seems willing enough to bear ‘em company. And better he make a match here of his own choosing than be driven by his Council to a diplomatic alliance as his father was before him!”

“His mother was an Archelandish princess, wasn’t she?” Edmund wanted to know, meekly trotting below in Drinian’s wake for a last inspection lest any small item be left forgotten in the hold. “Was it not a successful marriage?”

“The Queen was a gentle woman, and as much Telmarine as Archenlander, being the daughter to King Caspian the Eighth’s sister,” Drinian told them, raising the last lantern high so its light could illuminate every corner. “Aye, we’re done! You can return to shore with the last load of supplies while I secure the ship, if you prefer. She was always frail – scarce ever left the Telmar Palace again after Caspian was born.The King tolerated her, but theirs was never more than a diplomatic union. I’d wish better for their son.”

“So would I,” Edmund agreed warmly. “She seems nice - the Star’s Daughter. And awfully _grand!_ Anybody know if she’s got a name?”

“If Caspian has any thought of carrying her home as his queen, we must hope so,” Drinian chuckled, swinging himself back up to deck with the lamp still in his hand. “Queen Star’s Daughter – that would never do!”

“Lu might have heard it by now.” Edmund clambered into the morning’s pale grey light more cautiously, flinching from the bite of a strong wind that blew exactly the wrong way for westerly sailing. “You think he could mean to.... Gosh! What ever will Trumpkin say?”

“Plenty enough, but how much to any purpose?” He hated to see his proud ship stripped bare, her huge mast forlorn and unadorned, but there was a long journey before them whether Caspian added another passenger to their company or no, and it was his duty to ensure the Dawn Treader stood ready for the months ahead. “There have been discussions in Council as long as I’ve been part of it on the difficulties of finding a queen! You remember I mentioned the Duke of Galma’s daughter...”

“The squinty one with freckles, yes.” On shore he could see them gathering: Caspian with the lady at his side; Lucy and the four long-lost lords at his back, all of them with hands to their eyes, watching Rynelf steer his little craft back toward the Dawn Treader. Drinian grimaced.

“Her father offered her as guarantor of a full alliance between us,” he said, heaving up the largest remaining sack in readiness for the gentle bump of oars against the side. “Cornelius was greatly in favour, and he was hardly alone! All our established treaties had been in abeyance during Miraz’s reign…”

“There’s always Archenland. Surely she’s a more valuable ally if Calormen’s still a likely enemy,” Edmund pointed out. Drinian (Eustace thought) looked a touch sheepish.

“Aye, but there’s a close blood tie already between the two crowns, and we’ve a treaty signed with King Nain inside the first year of the reign, for all the use it would be in battle! I served eight years with the Archenlandish fleet. I know their fighting strength – or want of it! We might be better off alone.”

“At least she’s a buffer between us as Tashbaan.”

“True, and better as a meagre ally than an open enemy! Climb down boys, I’ll take a last tour of my lady then join you ashore. Rynelf! Set His Majesty and Eustace back ashore then return for me. Does Rhince have the parties assembled for the afternoon?”

“Aye, Captain.”

“And friend Pittencream?”

“Seems glad enough to be among his fellows, Sir.” Drinian arched a sooty brow and every eye lifted to the knot of spectators on the beach, the straw-spiked mop of the recalcitrant Pittencream prominent among them.

“I doubt he found much to say to the Star and his daughter,” muttered Edmund.

“Or the four lords when they woke up,” added Eustace, scrambling over the rail. “All right, Drinian – we’ll leave you to it! Come on Ed, it must nearly be lunch time. I’m famished!”

“First sign of work...” his cousin mumbled. Eustace laughed.

“Second actually – or haven’t you noticed all the heaving and carrying we’ve been doing today?” he said good-naturedly, squeezing onto the forward bench. The little boat rocked alarmingly as Drinian dropped the last few bags down behind them, the men at the oars stowing all their tiny craft could bear. A shout from their Captain before he turned to disappear from the deck had them pushing strongly away, Rynelf angling their prow straight for the shore.

“D’ you think he’s right?” Eustace wondered, plucking at his cousin’s sleeve. “About Caspian and the lady?”

“Probably.” Lucy might allow romantic imagination to run away with her, but never Drinian! “After all she’s awfully pretty; and she seems clever, too! He had three years in Narnia to find a wife and didn’t... Hi, Caspian! Drinian says we’re to start work on the hull after lunch.”

“Hm? Oh, yes, very good, Edmund,” said the King, not taking his eyes from the lady beside him even as he spoke to his friends in the boat. “Madam, will you allow me to escort you to the table?”

“Gladly,” said the lady in her low, sweet voice. Caspian blushed.

“See!” Lucy hissed, leaning forward to actually drag her brother ashore. 

“Drinian thinks so too,” Edmund confided. “Lu, we shall have to keep the four lords out of the way. I think Drinian’s got enough work planned to keep the crew from interfering, but...” 

“Understood.” Her heart skipped a little at the prospect. _Goodness, I really must be growing up!_ she thought, only half regretfully.

*

As one day drifted into the next, Drinian kept his crew more than busy about their stranded ship. Caspian evinced a curiosity about Ramandu’s island quite equal to anything he had displayed on the eastward journey; and the lady matched him with her interest in his tales of Narnia. Lucy and Edmund did their part by occupying the Lords Revelian, Argoz and Mavramorn, while Eustace (being altogether too fond of ghoulish horror stories) undertook to distract the Lord Rhoop,

Matters, the children congratulated themselves, could not have been managed better.

Caspian thought his admiration for the lady carefully concealed, which amused everyone else hugely, knowing every second conversation revolved around His Majesty’s hopes and the likelihood of their success. Drinian was driven to distraction in trying to keep the men from staring as the young pair progressed stately along the beach each morning: he offering his hand where the path became uncertain; she pausing with a hand on his arm as she pointed to some especial view. Rynelf even whispered one day that he saw the King stoop forward, brushing a long strand of sun-bright hair away from the lady’s cheek.

And if the men stared in frank defiance of courtesy toward her the Star’s Daughter returned their scrutiny in full measure, causing titters and blushes among the most hardened of tars. Inside a week she could address every man by name.

Eustace was impressed. Edmund and Lucy nudged each other and smiled. “She’ll make a good queen,” said Lucy.

“She’ll certainly look the part,” agreed Edmund.

“Always assuming Caspian gets around to bally _asking_ her!” muttered Eustace. “Oughtn’t he to have _done_ something by now?”

Every night as the sun set the Captain marched his crew up from their seaside camp to the laden table to dine and laugh as they debated the day’s progress. Each evening the Lady Liliandil – to the great relief of one and all Ramandu’s daughter did have a name – would sit beside the King of Narnia and serve win to him and his noble friends. Ramandu, the ancient Star himself, they never saw.

Until the day he came to speak with Caspian at his daughter’s request. With the Dawn Treader finally refloated, her rigging all freshly tarred, hull scraped, and the pristine sheet of her purple sail flapping gently in a favourable breeze, an end must be made to speculations. The gentleman asked; the lady accepted. The assent of her father was sought and duly, even joyfully, given.

The men of the royal galleon were therefore the first Narnians to kneel in homage to their future Queen, and every one expressed himself delighted with his sovereign’s choice. The Lady Liliandil (though not a little nervous) prepared with great excitement to leave her lonely island. And Caspian, unable to wipe the great grin from his face, took the opportunity of the company making merry in her honour to detach the other betrothed gentleman of the party in order to discourse (at great length) on his happiness.

“And thank you, old friend,” he added seriously, when he had finished counting off his beloved’s many virtues and enumerating all the reasons he had for thinking himself the luckiest dog that ever drew breath. “Your connivance in granting me this time to win her has been seen and appreciated by us both.”

“From the little I’ve seen I daresay she’ll make you a fine wife, Caspian;: the best any friend could wish for you.” A wicked grin twitched the corners of Drinian’s mouth. “And besides, if I’m to lose my freedom on reaching home, so should you!”

“ _Freedom!_ ” scoffed the King. “I think Liliandil and Daniela will approve of each other, don’t you? It would be simply unendurable were _our_ wives to loathe each other on sight! Now come, we should re-join the others before Revelian can notice we’re gone. Glad am I to have released them from their enchantment; gladder still shall I be to see them deposited back in their own lands! Did you ever hear so many _questions_ as we’ve had from them?”

“Think of the years o’ talking they have to make up for, Your Majesty,” Drinian answered dryly, heaving himself up from the tree stump he had taken as a perch on the very edge of the woods. “I think – if your lady’s agreeable – we’d be wise to embark tonight. The winds are turning for us and the dawn tide’s the most favourable for weighing anchor off these low-lying coasts. If you and she will be so kind as to make your farewells to her father, I’ll hurry the men aboard.”

Caspian gripped his arm as they fell into step, breaking clear of their cover and turning toward the shore. “As Revelian once said, _out oars for Narnia_ , my friend,” he said, solemnity fading at the sight of his bride coming in search of them. “My lady! Liliandil we’re to board the Dawn Treader tonight. Drinian suggests we go to your father now, while we’ve ample time for farewells.”

The lady smiled, extending her hand. “I shall take you to him directly,” she said softly. “We shall not delay the ship, my Lord,” - this to Drinian. “My father and I have had ample time for preparation! We will join you on the beach presently.”

Drinian bowed deeply to the woman who would, one day soon, be his Queen, and tossed a wink to the boyhood playmate who was also his King. The ship stood in pristine condition. Caspian had done his part. There was no reason to loiter any longer on land.

He for one was eager to be away. Caspian was not the only man with a wedding awaiting in Narnia, after all.


	3. Stormfish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hostile Sea People are not the only peril of the Deep. Drinian only wishes Queen Lucy the Lookout wasn't quite so adept at spotting them...

On the seventh day out from her father’s island the Lady Liliandil swayed from the poop with a smile to the man at the wheel, down the maindeck and along toward the fo’c’sle where Lucy (who had crept from their shared cabin at first light) was leaning on the bow rail, her hand to her eyes as she peered toward the western horizon. Everyone knew how much Queen Lucy still missed the company of Reepicheep, with whom she had shared the low bench at the bow’s point many a sunny morning on the eastern voyage. 

Liliandil nodded in passing to her betrothed, smiled at Edmund and Eustace who stood beside him and made her precarious way up the forward ladder. “You really do rise uncomfortably _early_ , Lucy!” she informed her friend lightly. “One would think Drinian had assigned you to lookout duty!”

“I wish he _would_ : it’d give me something to do!” Lucy laughed, offering a steadying arm before the Star’s Daughter could topple against the side. “Goodness! You haven’t got your sea legs yet at all, Liliandil!”

The future Queen of Narnia sighed, resting her elbows beside her predecessor’s on the worn wooden rail. “Anyway,” Lucy continued, “I should be a hopeless lookout, and Drinian knows it! I’m much too easily distracted by the silly, unimportant little things, and the man on watch has to concentrate all the time on the bigger picture.”

Seeing how the phrase puzzled her neighbour she hastened to clarify. “A ship’s lookout has to see in a wisp of cloud whether it’s trailing a storm on its tail, not whether it looks like a rabbit – see, there are the ears, and a pointy bit that could be its nose...”

Liliandil stared up at the fluffy white swirl for a moment. “I _think_ I see it,” she said doubtfully. “But it looks more like a toad on a log to me!”

“Oh, nonsense! Anyway, where _I_ see the patterns the whitecaps make, a sailor notices a tiny change in colour that indicates the seabed’s rising. A lookout can’t maunder off into thinking how pretty the fish are – look, see! They’re sort of... sea-coloured and shiny, but you _must_ see the fins slicing the surface! Look! _There!_ ”

“ _I_ see nothing!” Liliandil wailed, hanging so far over the edge that her long golden hair fell like a swinging curtain over the rail. “’Tis the glint of the sun on the waves, naught more!”

“No, they’re definitely fish, and there are _dozens_ of them!” cried Lucy, pointing with more vigour as if by her enthusiasm she could sharpen her neighbour’s eye. “Look, they’re swirling around the bows! You _must_ see them now!"

“I – yes, yes I _do_!” The Star’s Daughter had never left her father’s isolated island before. The smallest thing astonished and delighted her: something that (Lucy thought) boded very well for her arrival in her new land. “Oh! They are _beautiful!_ ”

They craned over the rail together, pointing and exclaiming with excitement at the array of creatures, ranging from minnows to giants more than twelve feet in length, that skimmed like a glittering moustache in the galleon’s creamy bow wave. Such was their concentration that they quite failed to catch the swift tread of booted feet on the planking behind them, and the low, amused voice of the ship’s young Captain made them start almost overboard.

“Any farther for’ard and we shan’t need a dragon’s head for the prow! What has you so fascinated, Queen Lucy?”

“Drinian! Oh, do look, surely _you_ know what these fabulous fish are called!” Lucy begged him, shuffling along so he might slide between them and peer into the water’s depths.

Just as quickly Drinian turned away, striking a deliberately nonchalant pose with his back against the taffrail and his arms loosely folded across his chest. “Turn around ladies, if you please: nice and casual, as if we’re discussing aught and naught,” he said, keeping the words low though the tone in which they were spoken brooked no argument. “And not a word to anyone about our being surrounded by _those things!_ ”

“But what _are_ they?” demanded Liliandil, even as she obeyed. Most people did, Lucy considered, when Drinian spoke so sternly. “And what harm can they do? I never saw anything so lovely!”

“Their true name, Ma’am, I never heard, but the legends attached to those pernicious brutes are familiar to every sailor. Aye Your Majesties, come and join us. It won’t do for the fellows to see us so grim.”

“Oh, do stop being so _mysterious_ , Captain!” cried Lucy. “And tell us what you can about those pretty fish!”

“What fish?” asked Eustace, shoving his way past her to stare. Strong brown hands seized his shoulders. Though he squeaked in protest, he couldn’t stop himself being spun swiftly back around.

“No, Eustace! Pay heed and whatever you do, never look those monsters in the eye!”

“What’s wrong with their eyes?” Their supremely self-assured Captain was rattled and Edmund (who had been shaken more times in the course of their adventures than he cared to admit) was intrigued to know why.

“And whatever it is you may be assured _we_ did not stare into them, my Lord,” said Liliandil a touch defiantly. Drinian visibly (to one who knew him as well as Caspian) choked back the irritated response in his throat.

“I know that, Ma’am. If you had, you’d hardly be on deck talking to me now!”

“You’re talking in riddles, Drinian!” said the King crossly. “All right, _none_ of us will peer overboard if it will satisfy you, matter how _pretty_ these _fish_ of Lucy’s may be: on condition that you explain everything to us _at once!_ ”

The promise of co-operation had its intended effect. The fine lines of tension around Drinian’s eyes smoothed out; the stiffness of defiance leaked from his shoulders. He gestured to the bench (still known as Reepicheep’s) where so many chess games had been played among his passengers on the long voyage east. The two boys sat, while Caspian moved to lounge beside his lady on the rail.

“Well, Your Majesties, those brutes are a notorious omen of ill fortune to every mariner. Shining Sharks they’re called. Either that, or Stormfish.”

“Sharks?” Liliandil looked distinctly alarmed. “Will they eat us if we fall overboard?”

“Nay Ma’am, they’re more cunning than that – and greedier too.” If Drinian meant to be reassuring, Lucy decided, he might have found a better way! “I had the story first from an old Archenlandish sailor that had personal experience, but I’ve heard it from others since. The first traveller that looks into the eyes of those creatures is overcome by a compulsion to dive overboard. And _that_ is where the danger to a ship’s company really begins.”

“Why? The worst thing they can do is eat the chap,” said Edmund sensibly. Drinian grunted.

“If only it were! Nay: the sharks surround their victim, and in the time it takes for a captain to bring his ship about the hapless seaman is made into of _them_. He’s turned into a shark, with all its cruel appetite for fresh blood.”

“That’s impossible!” scoffed Eustace. “You mean they _actually_ turn a man into a shark?”

“On the inside, and that’s what makes the menace so grave! The floundering sailor’s rescued; brought back aboard by shipmates only too glad to save a fellow from drowning. They never trouble to peer into the man’s eyes and it’s there – so said my Archenlandish friend – that the only change can be seen.

“The ship resumes its passage, and her crew never suspect they’ve a killer in their midst. A man falls from the rigging – an accident, people say. Happens on the best of ships! The body’s committed, as is custom, to the waves. And there the sharks – the _real_ ones – are waiting to devour it.

“I’ve heard tell of companies being decimated by a single shark-man. Accident following accident, until some sharp eye spies the hand that pushes one poor devil from the yardarm… Then the alarm’s raised and the human shark goes insane, killing in plain sight until he himself can be killed and fed back to his masters.”

“Just as well you didn’t look them in the eyes, Lu,” said Edmund, who didn’t believe a word of it.

“That creatures so lovely could harbour such malice!” marvelled Liliandil, who doubted not a part of what she was told.

“And what a fortunate escape _we_ have had,” added Caspian, who was willing to suspend disbelief seeing that his friend had such faith in the tall tale. “Come Drinian, why the frown? Only we few are aware of those monsters’ existence!”

“Aye.” If the Captain had heard more than half the sentence, Lucy would have been very surprised. “There’s still the second part of their legend, the one that gives them their more familiar name, to pass before we congratulate ourselves overmuch, Caspian!”

At the top of his voice (making them all jump clean out of their skins) he continued. “Topmen aloft! Reef and furl! I fancy those wisps o’ cloud mean we’ve a storm on our heels!”

The men of the Dawn Treader, Edmund was convinced, were the most obedient and efficient crew he had encountered in a thousand years of Narnian sea voyages. They admired their commander above all men. His lightest word was (usually) enough to have every one of them leaping to his station.

Yet confronted with that order on this perfectly windless, blue-skied morning, they hesitated. A moment of stillness hung over the decks before instinct sent them scrambling, haring up the rigging to draw in and secure the enormous purple sail.

The question they dared not ask rose naturally to the lips of their sovereign. “What in the name of Aslan are you _doing_ , my Lord? I never saw a day set so fair!”

“Did I not tell you the other name for those devils is Stormfish, Sire?” Drinian asked crisply, setting off for the poop at a pace that had them all scurrying to keep up. “They trail foul weather on their tails: a punishment for those that fail to sate their bloodlust!”

“I never thought to hear such – such nonsensical superstition from you, Drinian!” cried the King. “Honestly! There’s scarce a cloud in the sky, and...”

“Cap’n!” An anxious bellow from the Mate stopped the sentence on Caspian’s tongue. “Look at them clouds, Sir!”

Everyone turned to stare along the line of his jabbing finger aft and to the north, from whence a thunderous bank of dark grey rolled, blotting out the sun. Lucy snatched at Edmund’s arm.

“Just the direction those hateful fish came!” she gasped. “Oh, _Ed!_ They do look vicious!”

“There were naught be’ind it a minute ago, I’d swear to it!” Rhince was protesting, still shaking his shaggy head. “I dun’t know ‘ow the Cap’n saw...”

“Get below, Your Majesties!” Drinian instructed sharply as he flung himself at the wheel, perfectly certain two men’s strength at least would soon be necessary to hold any kind of course. “All hands! All hands on deck!”

Caspian lurched across the poop for the aft hatch, forcing it open just as the first wave picked up his mighty galleon and tossed her like a cork bobbing on a pond before dropping her, nose first, into the broiling greyness of a furious sea. Lucy, Liliandil and the boys staggered after him and, more by luck than judgement, they contrived to fall straight into the Great Cabin, residence of Narnian queens past and future for the journey home.

“Phew!” Edmund whistled, looking for a discreet way to spit out a mouthful of sea water and failing miserably to find it. “Perhaps there’s more to these old sailors’ tales than I thought!”

Liliandil produced crisp, dry towels from the sea chest beneath her swinging cot and tossed them around her companions. “Drinian plainly thinks so,” she said. Caspian, trying to blink the brine from his stinging eyes, grimaced.

“And unless it be the most absurd coincidence, his belief may be justified: those infernal beasts really _do_ trail the storms on their tails! Perhaps even the most outlandish myths have a kernel of truth to them somewhere!”


	4. Queen Lucy, The Valiant

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She was given the title for a reason.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always hated the title I used in the original fanfiction.net posting of this story, so I've taken the opportunity of changing it. The focus is now where it really belongs.

The vile weather Drinian had predicted set in with unremitting ferocity on the tails of the Stormfish. Liliandil went down with a severe case of seasickness, and Eustace got the odd greenish colour about the jowls that Lucy remembered from their first disastrous day aboard. Her precious cordial was produced from the ship’s medical chest, but while it relieved their symptoms it did precious little to soothe their tempers. King Caspian’s bride, it was discovered, could pout quite as massively as Queen Lucy’s cousin.

“I _do_ hate these incessant storms,” Edmund grumbled, scrunched into a corner of the Great Cabin with the rest of the passengers while the galleon bucked bad-temperedly against the restraining hands of her crew. “And hark to that rain!”

“I should go on deck if it wasn’t so ghastly,” Eustace agreed from his perch on Lucy’s cot. Caspian, squeezed onto one end of the seat chest with the two ladies, grunted.

“ _If_ my Lord Drinian would allow it!” he exclaimed. “I never saw him in such a growling humour as when I last put my head through the aft hatch! A knot tied incorrectly caused a tearing in the sail, if I understood aright. I rather think I overheard the threat of _keel-hauling the confounded laggard responsible_.”

Edmund grinned. “We’re best out of the way then,” he said, angling himself to peer at the angry darkness visible through the sternport. “Pass the chess set, Scrubb! Caspian’s not exactly Reepicheep, so I may actually have a chance of winning a game!”

“ _There_ is a challenge no King of Narnia could refuse.” Caspian and Lucy switched places and briefly tedium was pushed away in a close and competitive game, interrupted only by a lookout’s excited hail.

_Land!_

The Dufflepuds’ Island loomed from the gloom as a murky smear across the horizon that flared into momentary sharp focus when lightning ripped the sky. “No depth o’ water close in for a galleon, Your Majesties!” Drinian bawled, waving in the general direction of the shore.

“But we _must_ pause here!” Caspian’s innards lurched. “We should never reach Burnt Island without watering here first!”

“There’s land betwixt, beggin’ Your Majesty’s pardon an’ all!”

“Impossible, Rhince,” said Drinian firmly as a squall sent water sluicing across the maindeck, causing men to skip cursing up into the rigging. “His Majesty expressly forbad the setting of a single Narnian foot on _that_ island! Have the men at the oars. We’ll creep in as close as we dare to the lee o’ those south-western hills and ride out this damnable storm at anchor. Your Majesties’ pardons, all.”

“Don’t mind us,” said Edmund immediately. “It’s bally awful! D’ you think it might die off late in the day?”

“We must hope so, King Edmund, else we’ve a rough row into the Magician’s cove.” Eustace and Liliandil could be heard mumbling at the prospect but Drinian, cheerfully immune to seasickness, thought only of the unfortunate oarsmen. “If you’ll excuse me, I ought to take the tiller. Low land, shallow seas and foul weather combined are every captain’s enemies! Rhince! Man the capstans and prepare to anchor on my order.”

*

Toward evening the sky lost some of its charcoal gloom. The wind dropped enough that Drinian ordered the boats lowered, and as soon as the dinner dishes were cleared the whole crew clambered down for a wet and (still) wild row ashore. The Dufflepuds, a riot of gaudy colour, hopped madly on the wet sand to greet them.

“Three cheers for the little girl!” hollered the Chief, his tasselled cap flicking back to strike his unfortunate neighbour in the eye at the top of every bounce. “Put it across the old gentleman right and proper, she did! Three cheers!”

“Three cheers! Three cheers!” yelled his followers, circling the startled Narnians in a whirl of scarlet, canary yellow and lime green. Edmund edged backward, which only encouraged them to bound closer.

“Gosh, they were less frightening when one couldn’t see them hopping into one’s face,” he muttered.

“Ow!” Eustace gave him a sharp push. “At least they don’t tread on a fellow’s foot!”

“Sorry.”

“We’re proper glad to see you, Missy,” the Chief announced, bouncing through a very peculiar bow. 

“Proper glad! That’s our Chief, and he tells it like it is! Proper glad!”

“Can we go back aboard now, Captain?”

“Quiet, Rynelf!” 

“Tempting, is it not?” said Caspian, leaking the question from the corner of his mouth.

“Come along, come along! We’ll feed you all a good dinner!”

Amid the supporting chorus Caspian’s demurral was almost drowned out. “You are very kind, Chief, but we had dinner before quitting our ship.”

“Why, then we’ll feed you supper instead! Nothing like an early supper!”

“Nothing like it! Nothing like!”

“But we can’t have supper straight after dinner!” Eustace argued. “We shall be sick!”

“Oh no, not sick!” cried the Chief, squashing his features into an expression of surprised dismay. “You’ll not be hungry ‘til breakfast time, that’s all! Lads, cook up potatoes for these fine gentlemen! Potatoes, custard and sardines!”

“Now I shall _certainly_ be sick!” Lucy squealed.

“Here comes the Magician!” yelled Edmund. The confused babble of Dufflepud voices faded into silence.

“Welcome, King Caspian. Welcome, King Edmund and Queen Lucy. Welcome, my lords and gentlemen all.”

Lucy had not been struck by his dignity the first time she had met the Magician but then, she supposed, he had not been surrounded by a bobbing undignified scrum of Dufflepuds, either. Suddenly he seemed much taller, and a great deal more powerful.

“Sir.” Caspian stepped forward. “Glad are we to reach your island’s lee from these turbulent storms.”

“Indeed, you have had harsh weather for your journey! Only speak your ship’s wants to me before nightfall, Captain. They will be attended.”

“You’re very kind, sir.” A seemingly endless list of small faults and breakages rolled instantly through Drinian’s mind.

“Might I present, my Lord...” Caspian began. The Magician raised a peremptory hand.

“There is no need. Daughter Liliandil is known, and welcomed as dearly as any visitor to these shores.”

“Father Coriakin.” She leaned forward, laying her smooth young cheek against his aged one. “From your brother Ramandu, greeting.”

“The rare mortal child of one star is daughter to all his brethren in constellation,” Coriakin explained before Eustace or the Chief could begin to question. “Narnia is blessed in the bride you have chosen, Sire.”

“No more than I am,” said Caspian promptly, making Liliandil colour and the Dufflepuds cheer, swarming around the newcomers on the path to the great house.

“You must all rest before supper.” The Magician lifted a hand and instantly lamplight flashed in every upper storey window. “Rooms stand ready for you all. Only ask, and we shall provide.”

“A hot bath for me!” declared Edmund.

“Dufflepuds, hot water!”

“Have it with you instantly Magician, we will,” the Chief promised, rubbing his leathery hands together. “Why! Don’t we boil up enough hot water every morning for a hundred hot baths at least?”

“A hundred at least, Chief! That we do!”

“But if you boiled it this morning it’ll all be quite cold again now!” Eustace pointed out miserably. “Bother! A steaming bath would be heavenly, too!”

“Oh no, young feller!” The Chief led a babble of shocked protest. “We’re not simpletons you know, whatever the old man here might say! Keep our cauldrons over the fire all day, we do! Hot water the moment you want it!”

“You ignorant _fools!_ ” Coriakin seemed to grow ten feet tall in anger. His hollow, pallid cheeks flushed an unbecoming crimson, and suddenly Caspian could understand entirely why these blundering creatures had shrunk from sending their own sisters and daughters into his house. “How many times must the cauldrons be burned out by this madness? Can you not comprehend, in the bombastic certainty of your imagined brilliance, that heat continually applied must eventually destroy?”

“Hark to him, mates!” yelled the Chief (although his defiance might have been more impressive were he not trying to hide himself among his companions). “Right clever soul he thinks himself, him with his great big magic book! Let the water go cold again, wouldn’t he?”

“I will not be mocked by imbeciles!” The Magician raised a long, thin hand in their direction and Edmund could see the glow of magic about to be unleashed glisten beneath the papery skin. The Dufflepuds clustered together, beginning to whimper, cry and moan.

“Stop it!” Lucy launched herself right in front of the pointing fingers. “They may not be very clever but they’re kind, and they don’t mean any harm! You’re a beastly bully! _Stop it!_ ”

“Lu, get out of the way!” hissed Edmund, tensed for the sizzle of a spell that would change or vanish his indignant sister. The air hissed with a sibilant sound of steel pulling against scabbards: a score of angry Narnians he gathered, standing ready to defend their outraged little Queen.

Lucy and the Magician stared at each other. His quivering hand dropped, the aura of power dissipating to leave it once more a withered, fragile old limb. Contracting into himself he seemed visibly to shrink; to age.

“You humble me Queen Lucy, justly named _the Valiant_ ,” he sighed as the Dufflepuds began to emerge from their trembling huddle behind her. “With the wave of a hand I can fill hot baths enough for all your subjects throughout history, and yet I choose to terrorise these foolish creatures _because I can_. You see why I am descended from the heavens as punishment and not, as my brother Ramandu, for honoured rest.”

“They mayn’t get any cleverer sir, but you can always learn to be kinder,” Eustace told him a touch wistfully. “Anyone who really wants to can do that!”

“Well spoken, Master Eustace,” murmured Drinian, guiltily aware of his own recent failings in that very human endeavour. Coriakin hung his silver head.

“The arrogance of these harmless fools should remind me to temper my own. Instead, it is the generosity of your spirits I must thank for my lesson! Go inside. Every room has a hot bath waiting. Only speak your will, and you shall have the scents most pleasing to fill your chambers.”

“Pinewoods!” cried Edmund.

“Roast beef!” said the galley master.

“Aye, cooked by another!” Peridan joshed as they all streamed into the house and up the wide stairs. Shaking his head at the laughing chorus of Narnian voices Caspian followed the throng, holding his place between Liliandil and the Magician.

“And what scent,” she wondered, “does the King of Narnia choose for his chambers?”

He stopped at the foot of the stairs, allowing the happy voices of their companions to melt away. “I think,” he said, breaking into a broad smile, “it shall be the old leather of my study chair at Cair Paravel. That, and Cornelius’s parchments for signature. Why! Does not every man, in truth, prefer the smells most associated with his own home?”


	5. The Phoenix People

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Burnt Island. A bit boring, or just ever-so-slightly deceptive?

Silence, lethargic and unwelcome, hung over the damp cluster of humanity huddled around a dying bonfire. In high spirits on their eastward journey they had christened this bleak, low-lying land Burnt Island, and by its very existence it had proven the necessity of their quest. Though its blackened, ruined buildings had depressed them the sun had shone, and all eyes had turned to the unknown horizon with hope.

Now, the days were shorter and the weather growing wilder the nearer Narnia they sailed. Once ashore there was no respite from work: not even for passengers accustomed to idleness afloat. There were scores of unskilled and arduous tasks to be attended at every pause to restore and restock the Dawn Treader. All hands were called upon.

It was the end of their third day, and Lucy hated the place more with every hour. Utterly deserted but for a few terrified rabbits, Burnt Island was even more desolate and miserable than she remembered; but she understood the decision that Caspian and Drinian had quietly made. 

They would water and provision their gallant ship to the uttermost here, though it meant delaying. They would, in so far as they could, spare Eustace the awful reminder of his past adventures by using the last of the previously uncharted islands, known for ever on the Magician’s Map as Dragon’s Isle, for the shortest of wooding and watering expeditions. Then they would press on ever westward, first for the Lone Islands and then for home.

If to spare her cousin’s feelings they needed to work three times as long and twice as hard in the wind and rain on the most mournfully unpleasant island she had ever encountered then Queen Lucy, like the humblest member of the ship’s company, knew she must accept it.

In her present dog-tired state, with her dinner of dry biscuit and salty beef lying heavy in her belly, Queen Lucy decided that she really didn’t care.

“I would suggest,” said Caspian, in the expressionless tone of utter exhaustion, “that we seek out what scant protection these benighted half-burned _trees_ can offer and try to sleep. I dare swear we have another long day’s labour tomorrow!”

“I’ll stand first watch if it please Your Majesty – Cap’n.”

“As you will, Rhince.” As people stood and stretched, wrapping themselves as best as they could in their waxed sea cloaks, Drinian flashed a weary smile to his second-in-command. “Not more than a two-hour stretch, mind. That’s right, Eustace – stamp down the moss as best you can, waterproofed cloak down first. Little enough protection I know: but more than these blasted trees give us!”

“I’ll let the fire die off, Sir,” said the Mate, saluting sharply despite the cloying numbness of his limbs. He propped himself up against the crumbling stump of the largest tree around the camp, humming softly as his companions settled down.

Inside five minutes the shuffling and scuffling of dark figures trying to lie comfortable on bare ground had ceased, leaving only the occasional snore to break the heavy silence. Rhince toyed with the hilt of his cutlass, a single thought playing over and again in his head.

_Mustn’t fall asleep. No, certainly not, mustn’t fall asleep. Mustn’t..._

A stentorian snort boomed over the main camp. His head tipping onto his left shoulder, the Mate slept as sound as any of his overworked companions.

There was none to cry a warning when the ground beneath the Narnian party began to stir; to change. Lucy whimpered in her sleep, snuggling into a hollow that sank beneath her weight. A twig cracked.

Nobody moved.

A long, scrawny shadow fell across his face. Rhince stirred.

Something hummed. Another twig snapped, closer, beneath a bare foot. The shadows shifted.

“Wha’s tha’?” The watchman’s heavy eyes flicked open, meeting a pair of large amber ones that stared uncomprehendingly into his. “Cap’n! Your Majesties! We’m surrounded! Get your ‘ands off me, feller!”

“Who are you? Caspian yelled as he was dragged roughly to his feet. 

Answer came as a series of incomprehensible clicks and grunts. “Perhaps you ought not to have asked them,” said Liliandil fearfully. “They seem terribly fierce!”

“’Tis all my fault,” Rhince moaned, still kicking out manfully to escape the clammy grasp of two wild-haired, grey-skinned creatures that seemed determined to bind his wrists tight with green, slimy twine. “Should’ve been keepin’ better watch!”

“Small chance you should have had alone,” Drinian assured him, between curses aimed at his assailants. That the struggle was clearly useless did not, in his opinion, render it worthless. These creatures, though small, were strong; but so were the men of the Dawn Treader. If just a few could break free...

“Ow! What do you want from us?” Lucy couldn’t bear to look into their grimy faces. “They look like madmen!” she wailed.

“It’s all right, Lu.” Edmund aimed a kick at the ankle of the savage who was roping him to his sister, receiving no more than a click of the tongue in return. “At least they’re keeping us together!”

“What for, though?” shouted Eustace.

“Dinner, probably,” muttered the girl.

Nobody felt confident enough she noticed, getting really frightened, to contradict her. Mute and sullen, the outnumbered Narnians allowed themselves to be roped into a grim line and pushed into motion, up the rearing slope inland with their strange, jabbering escort bounding around them.

“I don’t wish to sound unobservant,” said Drinian at length. “But does anybody remember seeing this confounded mountain in daylight? There was a conical hill, but naught this steep that I remember!”

“He’s right, you know,” said Eustace, before tripping over a crumbling and decayed tree root sticking up from the chalky soil. An arm shot out to break his fall. “Oh! Thank you, Mr... er...”

The man – he decided the creature was probably male, judging by the charred piece of rabbit skin ( _like a nappy_ he told himself, momentarily cheered by the thought) around the hips, thrust his face close to the boy’s and hissed a cinder-smelling breath. “Ugh! All right, sorry, only being polite! They smell as if they’ve just come out of a fire!”

“Just hope that’s not where they’re taking us, young master,” muttered Rynelf, next in line, a bit breathlessly. Liliandil could only hope none of them would recognise her shrill squeak of near-laughter for the signal of raw terror it really was.

They were marched relentlessly: over rocky ground; past trees stunted and hideously deformed, as if by a howling gale. At the fore Caspian and Drinian continued to wriggle their hands, trying in vain to loosen the thin cords of plant material that cut their wrists. “Hopeless!” the King admitted under his breath.

“Aye. How can an island change form so quickly?”

“Do you hear that noise?” Caspian was getting more and more alarmed. He hated the shrillness in his voice that betrayed the fact but even Reepicheep (he was sure) would have acknowledged this predicament to be unnerving. “Like – like a giant’s stomach rumbling. There! It’s happening again.”

“That’s no stomach, Your Majesty,” said Drinian flatly, feeling his own drop in sickly recognition. “ _That_ is coming from the island itself! Did you not feel it shiver?”

“Is it an earthquake?” Lucy asked fearfully as, further down the gloomy chain of prisoners, other voices echoed the Captain’s deduction. “Is the island going to collapse and swallow us?”

“Don’t talk rot, Lu. You’re scaring Liliandil,” Edmund chided nervously.

“P’raps it’s going to blow up?” suggested Eustace, not very helpfully.

“Look to the slope!” yelled Erlian close behind. “Cap’n! It’s risin’ up, Your Majesties!”

“Can’t be!” said Eustace.

“It is, though,” said Edmund, who would have stopped had not one of the savages given him a hearty shove in the back. “All right, all right! It’s deuced difficult to climb a mountain that’s never still with one’s hands tied behind one’s back!”

He was answered with another volley of clicking sounds. “Charmed!” he muttered. 

“Don’t argue with them, Ed!” begged Lucy. “I shouldn’t like to make them really cross! Ouf, and what’s that horrid smell?”

“Rotten eggs!” cried Eustace disgustedly, wrenching at his bonds. “Yuk! I wish I could hold my nose!”

“It’s sulphur! Look, there’s almost a mist of it,” said Edmund as people began to cough from the sickly yellow dust seeping into their lungs. 

“It’s awful!” Lucy spluttered, stumbling in his wake. “I think the Clickers themselves smell of it!”

“So’ll we if we don’t get out of it jolly sharpish,” her brother predicted gloomily. “Hi! Look ahead, there are _hundreds_ of them!”

Everyone squinted into the acid haze, to a place where the very mountainside seemed to heave with a throng of half-naked, sulphur-streaked phantoms. The crowd surged; the ears of the Narnians were assaulted by shrieks and grunts as bony fingers with enormous nails prodded and jabbed. “Lay off!” Rhince hollered, shuffling forward to take his place with them as Caspian, Edmund and Drinian tried to form a protective shield between their captors, Lucy and Liliandil.

“I’m all right, honestly!” Lucy shouted, not sounding it at all. “Oh, Ed!”

“A cave!” Caspian exclaimed, stumbling forward. “All right, we understand! You want us inside the cave!”

“It has a fire! Liliandil tried to throw herself forward until the bite of twine dragged her back. “Oh!”

Beyond the blaze (which gave out more smelly smoke than actual heat), wrapped in a fur as snowy white as the mane of his long hair, sat a single wizened figure with bright orange eyes. He clacked sharply with his tongue.

At once all the other Clickers fell to their knees. Those fore and aft of the prisoners tugged hard on their ropes, bringing down the Narnians in a chorus of assorted thuds and yelps. “What is the meaning of this _outrage_?” demanded the King, suspecting he faced his equal at last. “Who has the _audacity_ to seize the King of Narnia?”

“Eeee-aaa-ooouuuu-eee-aaa!” yelled the Clicker King

“Ooouuu-aaaiii-ooouuuu-eeee!” chanted his followers.

“Eeeee-aaaaa-iiiieeee-ooouuu!” 

“Oh, be _quiet!_ ” shouted Eustace, thumping the sandy floor with his knuckles. The Clickers ignored him.

The fire itself seemed to rise and dance in rhythm with their chanting. Thick banks of acrid smoke rolled from it making the Narnians splutter, their eyes streaming, while affecting their captors not a whit. “This – is - horrible!” choked Lucy, trying unsuccessfully to bury her nose against Edmund’s shoulder.

“Can’t – breathe – properly!” gurgled Caspian.

“Choke us then cook us, wager me life on it!” muttered Rhince, sounding (Lucy thought) more annoyed than afraid of the prospect. “Savages, they are!”

The Clickers rose and began to dance: or at least that’s what Edmund assumed they were doing with their arms whirling and feet stamping, spinning in a circle around their frightened prisoners that pushed them back into a tight knot, ever closer together. “Look at their eyes!” Liliandil squealed. “They’re _alive!_ ” 

Bright orange eyes, Caspian noticed. Fiery eyes that danced and glimmered like the flames themselves. He wiggled backwards, cursing at the bite of something sharp against his thumb. “Drinian! Hold still here, I think – a stone! I think...”

No more was necessary. Though it wasn’t easy to remain frozen with the Clickers shrieking in one’s face and puffing their poisonous breath over one, neither man moved while Caspian wriggled and swore, manipulating his dagger-edged pebble between his wrists and slicing himself as often as he did twine. Blood dripped sticky into his palms but he kept resolutely on, and at last – _at last!_ – the fibres snapped clean through. He was free!

“I think I can probably cut you free,” he muttered to his neighbour, leaning and stretching until he was shoulder to shoulder with the taller man. “Though I may cut you as much as your bonds, if my own experience is any guide.”

“I shall try not to bleed too _noticeably_ , Sire.”

“Oh, don’t be such a confounded _courtier!_ ” said the King with a grin.

Industriously (and not a little nervously) he took a better grip on his rough knife and began to saw away, judging from the muffled hisses when he cut flesh instead of binding. At length however Drinian too could snap his cords and, cautiously, offer the same service to Edmund on his other side.

And as the bloodied tool worked one way, exciting news was passed back the other. “Peridan thinks there’s a tunnel through the rock at the back of the cave,” Lucy hissed shrilly. “I say! What’s happening to the Clickers?

It was a question worth asking: for one by one, with sighs and moans, the dervishes were falling from their madcap dance, rolling on the floor into tight bundles of smoky humanity. “Are they dying?” whispered Liliandil, horrified.

“Poisoned?” Rynelf suggested, rather too hopefully.

“I think not.” Greatly daring, the Lord Argoz leaned to prod the figure closest to him. “This one is breathing; his pulse is strong.”

“Let’s get away while we can!” begged Lucy. “They’ll wake up soon, and they’ll be hungry!”

“If they intended to cook us Lu, I think they’d have done it by now.” Edmund was measuring the distance between their party and the cave’s mouth, over a score of sleeping Clickers, with alarm. “We’ll never climb out of here without waking them! It’s going to have to be Peridan’s passageway.”

“Agreed.” Still, Caspian cast a longing look at the obvious escape. “After me, everyone. Swords at the ready, men! Lucy, an arrow on your string! At least they left us our weapons.”

“Fancy they’ve never seen the like afore, Your Majesty,” said Rhince, putting his substantial bulk between the royal party and the passageway. “I’ll go first, Cap’n.”

“If the tunnel’s wide enough for Mate, the rest of us needn’t worry,” Pittencream joked warily. Rhince snorted.

“Aye, an’ if I gets stuck you’ll all be there to push me on,” he agreed, edging forward. “Plenty wide enough so far – and high, too! Needn’t even bend me ‘ead!”

Much encouraged the whole group hurried after him, shuffling their way in the pitch darkness. “Never mind my sword, I’d sooner have a torch,” muttered Eustace. “Ouf! Sorry, Ed. Didn’t mean to run into you!”

“Try not to do it again then.” The tunnel rose steeply. It was hot, airless and increasingly narrow. Edmund quickly discovered he needed all his breath for climbing. 

So did his companions, for within a few minutes the only sounds to be heard were gasps and grunts. If anyone had the energy to spare for talking he lacked the inclination, and at every instant they expected to hear the unearthly, wailing chants of the Clickers echoing down the shaft behind them.

“Roof’s lower ahead,” Rhince hissed eventually. How long had they been clambering, grabbing at the invisible walls for support, Lucy wondered? In the dark and the quiet time lost its meaning: it might have been a minute, an hour, or a day since they had tiptoed through the back of the cave. “By Aslan! There’s light ahead, Cap’n! Three points off the starboard bow!”

The landsfolk of the company turned their heads left and right; the sailors looked straight to the spot Rhince named. “Daylight!” murmured Rynelf wonderingly. _He never expected to see it again either_ , Lucy realised.

All at once she thought she could feel the smiles around her as people pressed forward more eagerly, scurrying and scrambling until they were clustered beneath a gaping hole in the rock, breathing clean air and quietly coughing the last sulphur from their lungs. “But how are we to get up there?” Liliandil wanted to know, giving a helpless little hop.

“I _think_ there’s a foothold or two.” Drinian ran the flat of his hand up the wall. “Why, it might almost be a ladder! Stand aside, Your Majesties.”

It was a struggle, with his grunted curses floating down to the anxious company as he kicked and clambered his way upward. The foot and hand hold were small: mere cracks in the rock, just enough for a determined man to keep himself from falling. Panting, his ebony hair plastered to his brow, Drinian finally scrambled onto his knees in open air and turned, his low whistle carrying back to the mountain’s heart as he contemplated his new surroundings.

“We’re just below the summit, Your Majesties,” he announced, poking his head into the shaft. “All right Rhince, hand up the ladies - and make haste! There’s something afoot here I should sooner not be caught up in! Hear how the whole island rumbles!”

One by one they kicked and scrabbled their way toward his helping hand, emerging tousled and breathless on a narrow plateau set above the sulphuric mist. “Gracious!” said Lucy, dusting herself down. “We must be right at the very top of the mountain!”

“It’s not a mountain, Lu.” The acrid heat; the movement of the earth; the ominous grumbling and grating sounds; even the orange blaze in the eyes of the Clickers themselves. It all pointed to one thing, and Edmund kicked himself for not seeing it sooner. “It’s a volcano – and it’s active!”

“ _Very_ active,” Eustace added worriedly. “Which way to the boats?”

“South-east – quickly!” As his crew began to charge downhill, disappearing into vile yellow clouds, Drinian caught Lucy by the hand. With Caspian pulling Liliandil and Eustace being (not too gently) dragged along by Rhince, the three slowest members of the company were accounted for. Edmund took to his heels and fled.

How long he ran before the clouds began to thin and the rugged upper slope softened into the gentler gradient of a grassy hill, he could never be sure after. He ran blindly, trusting to the sounds of their footsteps to guide him. “What about the Clickers?” he heard Lucy call out.

“What of ‘em?”

“We can’t leave them to die, Caspian!”

“Speak for yourself, Your Majesty!” bawled Rhince. “What’s this blasted island doin’ now?”

“It’s splitting in two!” shrieked Liliandil. “Look!”

Sure enough, west of the Narnians a bright fissure began to form. With the ominous tearing sound of a million sheets of calico parting the hillside itself cracked open, bringing a slow, crackling ooze of molten lava to the surface. “That’s what their eyes was made of!” Rhince bellowed.

“Quickly!” Through their camp without pause to salvage the few possessions scattered around; beyond twisted trees smouldering now in the hot, damp air; across the narrow strip of pebbled beach; and with a splash through the shallows to a trio of little boats moored close to the ruin that gave the broad anchorage its name of Cottage Bay. Lucy fell in first head-first, barely having time to right herself before the others could pile aboard. 

Even before Caspian had collapsed onto the bench beside her Drinian and Rynelf were shoving the craft into deeper water, six of their fellows hauling hard on the oars. “Look to the mountain!” Caspian cawed.

Around the sharp conical summit the Clickers kicked and whirled their dervish dance, seen from the sea between rising whorls of smoke and steam. “They must be wiped out!” cried the Star’s Daughter in horror. “Aslan, help them!”

“Never mind helping _them_ ,” retorted Eustace. “If that thing blows now, _we’re_ still too close for comfort if you ask me!”

To Lucy it seemed the danger was remote: something that might harm another person but not her as she stared, awed and terrified in equal measure by the raw power of the exploding island. “I never saw anything like it!” she marvelled. “What’s happening now?”

With the roar of a thousand thunderclaps the top of the island hurled itself into a pink-streaked dawn sky. Down all four sides gushed a dazzling red-gold flow of fizzling, crackling lava, studded here and there with the black dots of hands and feet, just visible for a last moment before burning away. “The Clickers!” Lucy screamed, hiding her face against Caspian’s shoulder. “Oh, I can’t look!”

“We should have tried to save them,” the King whispered, only wishing he could turn away too.

“I’m cold,” said Eustace flatly. “No,” he added defensively when people turned to stare. “Honestly, I’m _really_ cold! Can’t you _feel_ that icy wind?”

“The island!” The shout came from the second boat under Rhince’s command: that gigantic bellow, Caspian was sure, which ought to be audible all the way back to Cair Paravel. “It’s freezin’ over!”

“It is, it _is!_ ” Lucy blinked once; twice. Wind whistled through the exposed boats and swirled around the island, instantly cooling the broiling lava into dull grey rock. “The mountain’s gone! It’s just plain, lonely old Burnt Island again!”

“Even the trees look exactly the same as when we first saw them,” Eustace muttered, giving his eyes a very hard rub. “I don’t – I didn’t _dream_ the eruption, did I?”

“Not unless we all did,” said Edmund sensibly. “Caspian – Drinian - what do you make of it?”

“And there’s not a sign of them – the Clickers,” murmured the King, regarding his oldest friend with wide eyes. Drinian bit his lip.

“I wonder,” he murmured, tweaking the tiller the fraction required to bring his boat directly into line with the rope ladder hanging down over their galleon’s side. “Remember Sire, the legend supposedly brought to Narnia with the Conqueror’s army?”

“Lion’s Tail, which one?” asked Caspian crossly. “There are a hundred legends attached to the doings of our ancestors at least!”

“Fancy the Cap’n means the Isle of Fire story, if it please Your Majesty,” offered Purlian from the forward oar. Caspian’s mouth fell open.

“The – the Phoenix People?” he stammered. “The strange creatures whose home was consumed by flames and who rose anew from the ashes at moonrise? I – by Aslan! Could it be that _they_ , whose land lay farther from these seas even than Narnia, knew of this place?”

“You’re being mysterious again!” wailed Eustace (quite unfairly, Lucy thought). “Who are _they_ , and what’s _the legend_?”

“The legend,” said the King, very solemnly, “came to Narnia with my ancestor Caspian, known as the Conqueror: who had for a captain in his army one Tirian, the only Telmarine that dared take ship against his enemies. Ennobled Master of Etinsmere by his grateful sovereign, he is (of course) our own bold Captain’s direct ancestor. All we Narnians of Telmarine stock have remaining to us of Telmar are the legends brought to our homeland by such men as they.”

“The Phoenix People were wild men living on a distant isle, consumed at the end of every starless night by great fires, only to rise again with the new moon,” Drinian continued, guiding his boat to rest very gently against the Dawn Treader’s protective side. “Oh, they’re as much a part of folklore and fairy-tale as the Diamond Island and the Grey Ghost of Table Hill – or so we thought!”

“Aslan told us the Telmarines were mariners in our world,” Edmund remembered, stupidly relieved to be climbing back aboard the gallant galleon even though any danger the island posed was already long past. “Perhaps when they reached this world they explored more than’s recorded in the official histories. Who’s to say they didn’t go looking by ship for other lands than the one they found to settle in?”

“And they came into the Eastern Sea, seeing the very same things we’ve been seeing!” Lucy exclaimed, clapping her hands. “Gracious! Are we going to wait tonight to see if the Phoenix People _do_ rise from the ashes?”

“Not if this wind keeps up,” said Drinian, completely the Captain again. “The anchors are already dragging a touch, and I shouldn’t care to be beached on so chancy a coast!”

“Nor should I. We’ve no idea how often the island blows up, and _we’re_ not phoenixes!” said Edmund decisively. “Phew! And we thought we’d had all the adventures possible going east!”

“We shall have to delay longer – I’m sorry Eustace, there’s no help for it now – on Dragon Island,” Drinian warned them. The boy nodded.

“I’ll be all right, but I’m bally well not wandering off on my own! Who knows? Maybe we’ll find out what happened to Lord Octesian while we’re there.”

“Having discovered the secrets of Burnt Island,” said Caspian earnestly, shooing his friends aft toward the poop, “I should say anything might be possible! Very well Captain, we shall continue west at your discretion. Can we have the galley fire lit? I believe we should all benefit from a good mug of hot mulled wine!”


	6. The Fate Of A Friend

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dragon Island holds one mystery they really couldn't reach home without solving.

“I should like to go and see that waterfall,” said Lucy suddenly, making Edmund pause in the act of lifting a spoon to his mouth. Porridge dribbled off the end, staining his green hose with a brownish puddle. “The one we saw from Eustace’s back when we were here last time. We do have time for a little exploring today, don’t we?”

“I see no reason why not.” Caspian set his bowl aside with a merry smile. “It falls just beyond those hills north-east across the valley, if I recall it rightly? No great hike! We could be there and home easily before dinnertime.”

“There’s a clear way through the woods. I had rather sharp eyes then,” said Eustace, quite immodestly. 

“Oh, do let’s go!” cried Lucy. “Ed, say you’d like to come!”

“I think I should, if we have time.” 

“All the time Your Majesties need,” answered Drinian promptly. “The Dawn Treader stands fit for sea; and it’ll do the men no harm to take a day’s leisure while Your Majesties explore.”

A low murmur of appreciation ran through the assembled crew. “A day without duties would be of benefit to you no less than them, Captain,” said Caspian formally. “Come now! No man has worked more hours!”

“My job, Sire. Rynelf, Ugrian, fill flasks for Their Majesties; and gather supplies. You’ll need a good lunch after such a hike!”

“Liliandil...”

“I shall come with you, Sire.” The Star’s Daughter rose in a swirl of sea-green skirts. Beside her Lord Revelian climbed more awkwardly to a vertical position.

“As shall I - with Your Majesties’ consent, of course?”

“Granted, my Lord,” said Caspian, startled. “Is there, perhaps, a reason?”

“Aye.” The burly nobleman’s broad brow furrowed. His voice dropped. “In that direction did my cousin, Octesian, set off on the last day I ever saw him living. It may yet be we might discover some clue as to his fate.”

“Ah. The Lords Argoz and Mavramorn...”

“Told me often _not to dwell on his disappearance_ , Sire. They will remain here, with Rhoop.”

“And what,” mused Liliandil, raising her sweet voice a fraction, “of my Lord Drinian, Sire? Will _he_ accompany our exploration, do you suppose?”

“It would do my Lord Drinian no harm to sleep the day through; but I hardly expect such a laggardly course to appeal.” Caspian grinned in his friend’s direction. Drinian, deftly knotting a pack of bread, ham and fruit together, grimaced over his shoulder.

“I may sleep a week away when Your Majesty is safe returned to his own chamber at Cair Paravel,” he countered, perfectly serious but for the twinkle in his eyes. “But permit that you scramble about an unknown mountainside unguarded? Trumpkin would have my hide! Now, we’ve supplies enough for everyone. Shall we be away?”

“Lead on, Eustace.” Caspian offered his arm to the Star’s Daughter; Drinian, Edmund and Revelian set picnic packs on their backs; and to a chorus of cheers from the crew they all followed Eustace at a trot inland, passing through the first line of trees and onto the steeply rising ground that formed the first ring of the bay’s defences.

The climb, over one hill and then another, was much stiffer than Eustace had anticipated. “It looked easy enough from up there!” he panted, perfectly certain he could never have made the ascent on the eastern journey, before the chubbiness of arms and legs had given way to at least a small degree of toned muscle. “You all right, Lu?”

“Just about.” She used the trees for handholds he noticed, annoyed he hadn’t had the same idea for himself: pulling herself up the increased gradient from one stripling to the next and clutching at Edmund’s hand, or Caspian’s, or Drinian’s, when the gaps between were too great. “Golly! How long have we been going?”

“For ever!” gasped the Star’s Daughter, one hand pressed to the niggling start of a stitch in her side. Revelian paused, thrusting an arm back in support. “Oh, thank you, my Lord! There is no such steep terrain on my father’s island!”

“It’s this infernal _scree_ we’re scrambling on that makes it all so deuced _difficult_ ,” said Edmund sensibly, the last word emerging high-pitched as he fought the splits. “Bother! One can’t see where one’s feet are going at all!”

“Two of our men broke limbs while searching these woods for my cousin, King Edmund,” Revelian told him, thrusting out his broad chest to break through the next screen of bracken. “Aye, we scoured these hills and valleys two full days before giving him up for lost. Like Restimar on the island you call Deathwater – not a trace to be seen!”

“They can’t have searched very hard,” muttered Eustace.

“Which may be just as well,” Edmund argued under his breath. He shielded his eyes with a hand, staring across the breadth of a flat valley to the sheer cliffs rising ahead, where a thunderous curtain of water dropped, diamond-edged, to broil and bubble before flowing on south-west toward the sea. “Golly! It’s a lot bigger from ground level!”

“And much noisier too!” Lucy added, cupping her ears. “Come on! We’ll be there easily in time for lunch now!”

The closer they trekked, the more impressive the monumental waterfall became; the louder its roar; and the more brilliant the dance of colours caught by the sun’s rays in its haze of hanging spray. Rapt, the little band of travellers forgot to talk or share impressions, content instead to stare, cataloguing sensations for later consideration. When at length they stood beside its foaming basin, staring up the slate rockface to the lacy collar of tumbling water at the summit, Lucy felt smaller and feebler than she had ever been in her life.

“Magnificent,” Caspian murmured, his eyes screwing up as he stared into the heart of the cascade. “Eustace! _Must_ you scramble about on the rocks? They must be permanently soaked – be careful!”

“I’m all right – just need a drink.” The boy was perched precariously on the largest of a ring of boulders around the foot of the fall: doubtless all made of the same grey rock as the cliffs themselves but darker, kept black and glistening by the constant settle of spray. “Gosh it’s fresh – like being under a shower! Do come and loo – ow!”

“Eustace!” Carless of the conditions underfoot everyone lunged onto and over the boulders, sliding and scrambling toward the boy sitting heavily in a large, chilly pool filled by the droplets thrown up from the waterfall’s base. “Are you all right?” Lucy squealed, arms flailing. If Revelian hadn’t been right behind to catch her, she might easily have made matters worse by slithering in on top of him. “Golly, we’re all going to be drowned! This _spray!_ ”

“I’m all right.” Getting up wasn’t easy, even with Drinian and Liliandil balanced on either side, trying to hold him steady without toppling in themselves. Eustace scowled down at a smoothly rounded boulder, smaller than most and slimy with moss and lichen. “That dratted _rock_ slipped under my foot. Anyone think to bring dry clothes? Or a towel?”

“That,” said Liliandil very seriously, “is no rock, I think. Sire...”

Caspian picked his tentative way to the little boulder Eustace accused. Gently, he lifted it. Lucy’s hands flew to her mouth.

Beneath the slippery film of lichen two gaping holes gave the impression of staring as the eyes that once had filled them might, the upper end of a prominent nasal bone jagged between them. “It’s human,” Edmund whispered. The King turned it in his hands. “Look!”

Low down, roughly behind the right ear, a single crack had splintered into a dozen tiny trails, leaving the bone resembling a frozen pond at the onset of the thaw. At the base of the main crack, rude and rough, sat a small, round hole.

“Octesian.” The gruff voice of Revelian broke on the final syllable. “But how...”

“Simple enough, I suppose,” said Edmund quietly. “He came here exploring, as we have; started scrambling about on these dashed slippery rocks; took a tumble, and...”

“He must have been lying here unconscious while we crashed through the trees calling his name.” Revelian couldn’t tear his eyes from the pitiful human fragment in Caspian’s hands. “His head broken apart on these confounded rocks, freezing to death as the night closed in... 

“With Your Majesty’s leave, we shall bury him honourably before we leave the land where he fell.”

“Of course,” Caspian agreed quickly, both brows raising at the strange look that flashed over Eustace’s face. “Ah.”

He laid the shattered skull reverently on springy turf close to the riverbank, offering a hand to his lady as the others scrambled after him to safer ground. “It may be, my Lord, that we find no more of your kinsman’s bones,” he said gently. “This island is not without its wild creatures. We ourselves, in the course of our eastern voyage, did encounter a carnivore of the most voracious appetites.”

“There was a dragon,” Eustace blurted, loud enough to make everyone stare. “It had an arm ring.”

“Eustace penetrated the beast’s lair,” Caspian hedged, feeling uncomfortable on his friend’s behalf: for though Eustace had made no secret of his misdeeds it must be painful to have everyone calmly discussing them. “Within, he discovered an amulet bearing the hammer and star of Octesian’s House. It was that which first advised us, my Lord, that your cousin passed no farther east than these shores.”

“A dragon.” Heavily the burly man sank to the ground, bringing linked fingers up to press against his mouth. “While we thrashed hopelessly through the undergrowth bellowing his name my cousin lay here unconscious, to end his existence no more than supper for an abominable carrion beast!”

“Your Lordship must not blame yourself,” Liliandil stooped over him, shielding the angry tears that spiked his lashes with the billowing curtain of her hair. “Nor damn the dragon for an instinct abhorrent to ours! The Lord Octesian fell victim to an appalling accident, naught more.”

“Indeed Ma’am; and a wound such as this to the head must surely have been his end even had his companions discovered him still breathing,” Drinian added, his tone gentler than the pragmatic words. “Look to that hole! I’ve seen arrow heads that have done less damage! He must have struck a stone sharp as a dagger to cause such an injury.”

Revelian nodded, reaching out to stroke the battered skull. “Let this be buried close to the bay where he, like Your Majesties, first came ashore. And let us return there swiftly ourselves, lest the beast that devoured him still be hovering!”

“It isn’t” said Edmund, taking advantage of the others’ turning to go to give his cousin’s arm a firm pinch. Eustace glared at him.

“And it didn’t have a mate, either,” he added, high and aggrieved. “Oh, come on! How would I have got into its cave if there were _two_ of them? Shall we start back and have lunch somewhere else? I don’t feel hungry now.”

Neither, it seemed, did anyone else. Drinian wrapped the last poor remnant of the Lord Octesian in a piece of canvas from one of their picnic packs while Edmund stuffed the uncovered food into another, though the sight of it made his stomach churn. Silently, gloomily, the Narnians turned their backs on the fatal waterfall and set off back across the valley toward the safety of the shore.


	7. Preparation Is Everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Is there anything scarier than a sea serpent? And if there is, how exactly is a crew supposed to defend against it?

“The sun!” cried Eustace, pointing heavenward in mock astonishment. “There’s actually still a sun!”

“Don’t be drawin’ attention to it young feller, it might get shy!” Peridan called down from his perch at the forward lookout post above them. The small knot of bored passengers lolling around on the fo’c’sle laughed.

“Winter at sea,” announced Caspian, with all the final authority of his sovereignty, “is _beastly!_ ”

“We’re past the worst now, Your Majesty,” Drinian informed them, pausing on his determined march aft from the prow. “Another four months or so and we’ll be sighting Cair Paravel.”

Faces brightened. “I _would_ say three months,” the Captain continued teasingly, “were I not sure we shall be dragged from _fete_ to _banquet_ and back again at every confounded island betwixt this point and Narnia!”

“You’ll allow us a single month to divide between Narrowhaven, Redhaven, Port Terebinthia and Galamaia, my Lord? Ungenerous, surely!” boomed Revelian.

“My Lord Admiral would permit us a single day in each, were he granted his way,” said Caspian with a tolerant smile to Liliandil. “Still, we must forbear with his unsocial ways! He has not, as I, the society of his lady for the length of the journey home.”

“And unlike His Majesty I’ve no tolerance for court formality,” Drinian parried, content (in the absence of any immediate crisis) to tarry in idleness with his friends. “If Duke Bern has his way we’ll be held a month at Narrowhaven alone, and my joints begin to creak. Harbour rot, they call it.”

“He loathed the sea,” Argoz remembered, smoothing down his silver beard. “He swore to defy Miraz’s desire for his death, but no power could have persuaded him to sail on beyond the Lone Islands!”

“Had I been less a coxcomb, I should have done as he did,” said the smallest and quietest of the three lords present, Marvramorn. “But no. I was too vain to confess, I too was tired of sailing! I left Narnia to deny Your Majesty’s traitorous uncle the satisfaction of my death, naught more.”

“I doubt there was one of our party did not long for the courage to do as Bern did,” Revelian admitted. “Oh, we were all reluctant mariners, Sire! Our ship and crew all Galmians, none of our own but we seven for company…”

“Was naught ever heard of our companions?” Argoz had asked the question several times always hoping, Lucy guessed, to receive a different answer. He never got it.

“I’d imagine the turned west at the Star’s island; and most likely were wrecked soon after, given that the Magician never saw them again,” said Drinian gravely. “The Galmians have a fair reputation as mariners, but the best o’ their shipwrights are halfwits, and the rest lubbers! That a vessel of Galmian construction survived to carry you so far still astounds me.”

“She was naught to your Dawn Treader, our Maiden of Galamaia,” Revelian affirmed. “The terrors we endured, riding a storm in her! Many a night I wished myself quiet in a Narnian grave, not seasick and storm-raddled in her main cabin!”

“It will be the work of years you see, my Lord Drinian, to make all Narnians such passionate mariners as you would wish,” Caspian teased. His friend shrugged.

“So be it, Your Majesty; but look what we achieved in the first three years! Not a dozen of this crew had sailed beyond sight of their own coast before volunteering for this service, yet we might have crewed four Dawn Treaders from the volunteers that came in answer to your call!”

“And we could have found no sturdier set of shipmates than these,” agreed the King warmly. “Rewards We have promised them; and how they have been earned!”

“Captain!” The voice floating down from the lookout’s post in the dragon’s mouth rather (Edmund thought) challenged Caspian’s lauding of his companions’ courage. Peridan sounded distinctly nervous. “There’s a right broilin’ afore us, Sir!”

“Rhince!” Instantly Drinian was at the forward rail, scowling into the turbulent whirl of water dead ahead. “Hard a-starboard! Sailmen, stand ready!”

“Hard a-starboard, Cap’n!” came the echo from the poop. Oh-so-slowly the ship began to heel, her course curving away from a foaming patch of greyish ocean an entirely different hue from the rest of the sea. “What is it?” squealed Lucy

A moment later she was wishing she hadn’t asked.

A deep, throaty roar seemed to swirl through the bubbles gathering off the port bow. It was followed by a huge, rounded head that reared as high as the ship’s side, grey-green and adorned with overlapping scales like plate metal armour, all covered with barnacles. The wave its climb from the seabed whipped up crashed against the hull, setting the galleon to buck madly. “Hold on!” yelled Caspian, clinging to the rail.

“What _is_ it?” cried Lucy again, in unison with Eustace.

“The reflective sheet!” Drinian bawled, sending three men lurching at top speed down the forward hatch. “The kraken, Your Majesties,” he added by way of grim explanation. “Hold her steady as you can, Rhince!”

“Doin’ me best, Cap’n!” howled the Mate, who was actually swinging from the great wheel.

“It’s coming at us!” cried Liliandil.

“It’s enormous!” Edmund yelped as the beast reared, blunt and squat, from the swirling waves. “Just look at its _teeth!_ ”

“I should much rather not,” Caspian told him, fascinated all the same by the long sabre-curved incisors bared in a gigantic snarl. “Hold tightly, Lucy! Another wave!”

“What do we do?” yelled Revelain, clutching the rail with one hand and his neighbour, Mavramorn, with the other. 

“We’m ‘ere, Cap’n!” Erlick, the senior sailman, had the harsh accent of the borderer, sharpened by exertion as he helped heave a large, tightly-folded glittering parcel from the hold. “Haul aloft, Sir?”

Drinian seized one corner, shaking it out to reveal a dazzling sheet of flexible Dwarf-wrought silver beaten down to the thinness of tinfoil. He lunged for the elaborate spider-web of ropes around the sail and the mainmast. “Away aloft!” he shouted, one eye on the laborious, splashing approach of the kraken off the bow. Erlick, appointed to his duties for being the most agile seaman on board, had to race hand-over-hand up the ratlines to keep pace with his commander.

“What _are_ they playing at?” Eustace demanded of Caspian, panic making him peevish.

“Aslan alone knows!” Crawling out across the length of the horizontal beam from which the purple sail hung, the two men cast down their brilliant burden. Tails of rope wavered toward the deck, deftly caught by Rynelf and Pittencream. “Too bright! I can’t look at it!”

“Don’t try, Your Majesty!” Pittencream instructed immediately. “Ready, Captain!”

The kraken, Edmund decided, swam the breast-stroke: dipping down to rear again, sending a wash ahead from the water its bulk displaced, it came on remorselessly with its goggling, bottomless eyes fixed on the Dawn Treader’s suddenly delicate-seeming forecastle. Light flashed past him: a tweak of the silver sheet he realised, catching and concentrating , _directing_ the sunlight. “ _I_ see – I think!” he shouted.

“Eyes shut below! And hold on!” The monster was close now. Wrapping himself around the stout trunk of the mainyard Drinian twisted his corner of the reflective sheet, his movement matched by Pittencream on the deck below. The sun’s feeble glow took fire off the shiny surface, and with another deft flick the four men on the corners had turned the blinding flash, firing it straight into the eyes of the beast.

Lucy felt the heat of it burn her own eyelids an instant before a sound of the most horrible anguish erupted from the kraken’s throat. Down, down it dived, for the safety of the dark seabed, its awful scream echoing in their ears long after its horrible staring visage was gone from their sight.

The Dawn Treader was tossed skyward, and so violent was the wrenching of the sea that Lucy’s feet were lifted clean from the deck. “Oh, my!” she wailed.

Her voice was drowned by the shouts, howls and curses of her shipmates as they clung for dear life to any solidly-attached object they could find, but her shoes found the planking again and her awful death-grip of the rail relaxed. The ship continued to surge on the sea’s unnatural swell, but of the monster that had caused the uproar there was not a trace to be seen.

Much more slowly than he had gone aloft Drinian clambered down, dragging his quarter of the burning hot sheet behind hm. “Resume course, Rhince!” he called aft to his deputy, suddenly bone-deep weary. _Shock_ , he diagnosed. _Crisis upon uproar upon near-catastrophe!_ “Ship’s company to the oars! The more distance we can put between ourselves and that beast’s lair, the better I shall feel!”

There was good sense behind the tired words and the whole crew knew it, if the alacrity with which they tumbled down the hatches was any guide. Under the combined power of sail and oars the Dawn Treader made such rapid progress that within an hour the place where the kraken’s head had reared was lost beyond the eastern horizon. And only then, Lucy thought, did everyone relax and begin to see the humour in their latest real fright.

“’Tis not the place of my Lord High Admiral to be _scrambling about_ in the rigging, Drinian,” the King informed his friend sternly. Narnia’s most senior sailor snorted rudely.

“The duty of a captain’s what ever might best preserve the safety of his ship. And might we hope that Your Most Excellent Majesty will cease to _bleat_ about _the needless expense of hauling a great sheet of dwarf-beaten silver from one end of the world to the other_ now?”

“Had the purpose of the _reflective sheet_ , as I believe you called it, been explained to my Most Excellent _and Serene_ Majesty before...” Caspian drawled. Drinian’s lips twitched.

“Oh, very _well!_ ” the King exclaimed, throwing up his hands. “I admit it! I objected to the insane expense of that object, and Your Lordship—“ using, Lucy thought, his friend’s land title as a deliberate provocation “—never saw fit to inform me of its proper purpose...”

“I think you might find I _did_ draw Your Majesty’s attention, in my first report on the feasibility o’ this quest, to the necessity of taking precautions against the menace of the deep ocean’s creatures,” replied Drinian, not noticeably offended. “Against the sea serpent of course there _is_ no defence, saving the beast’s natural stupidity, but the kraken is known for its horror of bright light. Explains why it’s so seldom seen at high summer.”

“ _We_ had no such consideration before our setting sail,” Revelian remembered gloomily. “Hence our ship almost being smashed to pieces! Had not our master bowman chanced to strike the creature directly in the eye, not a month before we reached the island of your Ladyship’s father, our adventures would have ended then and there!”

“Just as I told Your Majesty when the prospect of this voyage was first raised,” said Drinian positively (Lucy thought) preening. “Preparation is _everything_ at sea.”

“And what _preparation_ had your Lordship made,” wondered Liliandil (who had learned quickly from her fiancé when it might be permissible to tease their Captain) “for the possibility of our coming upon such a creature at midnight?”

“The only preparation available, Ma’am,” answered Drinian with a grin, gesturing to the sconces placed at intervals along the hull’s sides. “The only defence against the kraken at night is to light a torch, allow the beast to come athwart, then thrust the flame in its face! I’m told only the stoutest vessels can endure the buffeting of the wash a full-grown adult throws up by diving below the keel, but don’t fret unduly. We’d be unlucky indeed to meet two o’ the brutes in the same voyage!”

“ _Most_ reassuring,” said the Star’s Daughter doubtfully. Caspian chuckled.

“Had you ever encountered one of that species before, Drinian?” he asked. The Captain shook his head.

“Not I, Sire, though I heard tell of them from old comrades in the Archenlandish fleet. They seldom attack ships in established seaways. It means a bitter winter when the kraken or the sea serpent ventures into what might be termed familiar waters.”

“I’ll be jolly glad to reach the Lone Islands then, if where there’s more traffic there are fewer nasties lurking in the water,” said Edmund solemnly.

“Aye, the nasties are more likely to be on the surface once we’re past Narrowhaven, King Edmund: pirates, wreckers and the like.” Drinian, thought Eustace, was actually looking forward to tangling with the more accustomed human perils between the Dawn Treader and home.

In comparison with the kraken he decided, suddenly cheerful, so was he!


	8. Old Dogs, New Tricks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With the slave trade abolished in the Lone Islands, someone is out of a job. Not, perhaps, for long…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In the original version of this fic I gave the Dawn Treader a pair of cannons. That was me being lazy, so in this update I've restored the more canonical (and more difficult to write) bows, arrows and swords!

Drinian’s announcement at breakfast that he expected to be anchored off Narrowhaven by nightfall, Lucy thought, had produced quite a magical effect on the ship’s company. People started to smile; and though familiar seas can hold quite as many terrors as uncharted ones, the mere knowledge that land is never more than ten days’ sailing away is enough to give one permanent hope. “Dear old Lone Islands!” cried Caspian later, clapping his hands as the passengers idled the afternoon away. “I’ll wager Bern has them restored to perfect Narnian government again by now!”

“If any of the islanders remember what _perfect Narnian government_ might be,” said Edmund, who hated to be the wet blanket, even when someone needed to be. “How long had it been, do you know, since anyone from the mainland last went to inspect them?”

“No man knows, Your Majesty,” said Revelian. “And Narnia herself forgot good government under Miraz!”

“By our standards my Lord, Narnia has lacked proper government for almost a thousand years,” Caspian reminded him sadly. “If by that term we mean a government that considers, in equal measure, the good of _all_ its citizens.”

“We came a long way in three years Sire, and with Trumpkin in command there’ll have been no backsliding.” Drinian, a telescope tucked under his arm, had abandoned the poop to join them at the point of the bows. “Your Lordships will find Narnia much changed; but for the better.”

“It no longer has _Miraz_ in it, my Lord. That itself must make it a healthier place!” said Revelian grimly. “I’ll be glad to see the changes four years and more of Your Majesty’s rule have wrought!”

“Land ho!” yelled the voice from the fighting top. “Half a point nor’west, Cap’n! Land!”

“Only half a point, after twenty-seven days in open sea!” marvelled Mavramorn. “I congratulate you, my Lord Drinian!”

“Aye, we can allow ourselves a half-point’s leeway,” Drinian agreed (not a little smugly, Caspian noted affectionately) as he raised the glass to his eye. “Make the correction, Rhince!” he added aft to the grinning Mate. “Half a point, nor’west!”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n! ‘alf a point nor’west, Sir!”

Before long the island was a solid thing, not the blue-grey smear across the horizon Lucy first detected. Real hills rose up; coves and bays cut into coastal cliffs. Slowly, even trees and cottages became clear.

“Captain! There’s a ship Sir, tackin’ out from shore - see, from the southern quarter! Looks like a schooner, Sir!”

Drinian squinted, shading his eyes. As his hand stretched out, Liliandil dropped the required telescope into it. “Thank you, Ma’am,” he said, quite automatically.

“Aye, she’s a schooner,” he affirmed half a minute later. “Steering direct for the larboard bow! Ship’s company to battle stations! Every man to his sword! Master Bowman to the fighting top!”

“ _Pirates?_ ” Edmund asked, disbelieving. “They can’t catch much booty this side of the island! How often do ships approach Doorn from the east?”

“Most likely Bern has made the western shores too dangerous for them,” said Mavramorn, tugging the ends of his flowing moustache. “We encountered their brethren off the Seven Isles on our easterly sailing, Your Majesties - a vicious rabble! We had quite a battle to prevent their coming aboard.”

“We were menaced off Terebinthia,” Caspian remembered. “But, seeing us well armed, they very soon stood off. These appear to be stouter fellows!”

“I’ll say!” The schooner was skimming under full sail, making straight for the Dawn Treader. From either side of the hull long oars emerged, scything through calm seas and giving her the appearance of a gigantic insect crawling over a page. Eustace bit his lip. “Erm, oughtn’t we be bolting for it?” he asked.

“Oh, yes please!” added Lucy. “She’s moving awfully fast!”

“Hold a true course, Rhince.” Drinian, it seemed to his old friend and sovereign, was trying very hard not to laugh. “Archers to the rail! And run up the King’s banner!”

“ _What?_ ”

The men of the ship’s company, unlike their royal passengers, would never openly question an order from their commander; but they hesitated, frozen in their positions, at _that_. “These will not fight, Sire,” said Drinian calmly, offering his glass. As he raised it to his eye (and his neighbours seized telescopes from whichever sailor might be prepared to surrender one) Caspian gave vent to a great exultant shout.

“Why, it’s Pug!” he cried, pointing wildly to a brawny, shock-headed figure on the schooner’s poop. “Pug, the slaver!”

“So it is!” Edmund laughed as, dropping her telescope with a clatter, Lucy clapped her hands and all around the decks derisive shouts rose from the crew. “Hi! They’ve spied it! Just _look_ at the panic!”

Sure enough, people were gesturing madly at the galleon’s masthead where the flag of the Golden Lion stood proud against the wind. Somebody was pounding Pug hard on the back. “Perhaps he’s choking himself?” said Eustace hopefully (for he had not forgotten his uncomfortable night in the hold of the slave ship). “I say, Ed! I think you and I could make a better job of bringing the ship about than they are!”

“The oars! They’re clashing!”

“That’s what comes o’ men trying to row backwards, Queen Lucy.” There were tears of laughter in Drinian’s dark eyes, and at the point of the bow Erlian was bent double, clutching his sides with mirth. “Aye, haul her ‘round, you bunch o’ miserable lubbers! They’ll have the sail in shreds if they keep luffing her up like that!”

“Shall we give chase, Cap’n?” Rhince was eager for a fight. Caspian chuckled.

“What was it Reep said off Terebinthia? _Board her and hang every mother’s son of ‘em_?” he questioned.

“Had I not the King of Narnia and his bride aboard Sire, I should be glad to do exactly that.” Wiping his eyes, Drinian cast a regretful glance over his shoulder at the wallowing schooner. “Still, no harm in giving the blighters a fright! Bring us about, Rhince! Let ‘em see us in pursuit. Rynelf, let’s have a party of boarders standing amidships; and see if our archers can't shred their sail even faster than they’ll do it themselves.”

“Aye, Captain!” Every man leapt to his station. Swords flashed in the sunlight; a dozen men grabbed crossbows, quivers of arrows slung over shoulders as they directed a hail of missiles the pirates’ way. Voices raised, raucous curses following the arrows’ flight across the open sea. Drinian cleared his throat.

“Begging the ladies’ pardons, of course,” he murmured, one hand moving quite automatically to his own sword’s hilt. The Star’s Daughter wagged a reproachful finger.

“You, my Lord, are enjoying this!” she accused. 

“Can’t deny it, Ma’am! Oh, we’ve little enough chance of taking them – there’s no depth o’ water off these low-lying bays for a galleon – but there’s no harm in giving Master Pug a few nightmares! Bowmen, fire as she bears! Your Majesties may wish to step back. They’re likely to retaliate in kind if there’s a single man of spirit among them.”

“And miss this? Not jolly likely!” cried Edmund.

Pug’s crew, it seemed, had had all the spirit sucked out of them by the sight of the royal standard. Not a single arrow was returned to counter the Narnians’ storm and as the Dawn Treader heeled, her great sail slapping in the wind, into the schooner’s wake it appeared their commander himself was the most querulous of them all. “Mark their heading, lookouts!” Drinian hollered, visibly restraining himself from adding to the chorus of blasphemous derision being gleefully aimed from the maindeck. “I dare say Duke Bern might send out a party of his own when we give him news of our old friend.”

All too soon the leadsman was shrilling a warning, and at a barked command from her Captain the galleon was tacked smartly seaward, a dozen pairs of eyes peering back to track the other ship’s course. “I did wonder what he’d do once you abolished the slave trade, Caspian – Pug, I mean,” said Edmund, smiling at the sight of a dozen cackling crewmen returning their weapons to safe storage while their comrades attended the business of restoring the ship to her original course. “He’s not the sort of chap one would expect to find an honest job! I wonder if he’ll find piracy as profitable?”

“The way he’s handling his ship, King Edmund, I should think that unlikely,” said Drinian, loud enough for the sailors nearby to hear – and share – his scorn. 

“They do say old dogs have difficulty learning new tricks, do they not?” Caspian mused, lolling against the bow rail to smile the length of his royal ship. “And really – did you ever meet a greater dog than Pug? Shall we still be in port before dusk do you think, Drinian?”

“Sure to be, Your Majesty. And if you’ll excuse me, I ought to relieve Rhince of the helm,” replied his friend with a grin. “The Roads of Narrowhaven are treacherous, and it wouldn’t do for us to run aground in sight of Your Imperial Highness’s subjects! Sailmen, stand by! She’ll take some smart handling when we round the point and cross the first o’ the Doorn Shoals!”


	9. Hail The Conquering Heroes Come

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caspian must be King and Emperor again, and there are quite a few introductions to be made. Better he start at Narrowhaven than Cair Paravel…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back in familiar territories, the perils to be faced are of a very different kind. Formality doesn't sit comfortably with Caspian - or his Captain.

Any hope he might have had that his return to known waters be accompanied without fuss, Caspian acknowledged gloomily, had been scuppered before the Dawn Treader’s keel skimmed the first and most treacherous of the sandbars known as the Doorn Shoals. First there had come, tinny across the waves, the chime of a distant bell; then a whole peal; and the raucous blare of trumpets. Before the royal galleon was straightened onto her new course, running due north for the harbour of Narrowhaven, a welter of small boats, gaudy as so many gilded insects with their festival banners flying, were scudding from every conceivable cranny and cove toward her.

“Hang it all!” he muttered between clenched teeth, even as he raised a hand in a regal acknowledging wave. “Now I shall have to play the King again!”

“They’re only curious to see a real, live emperor,” said Eustace, hanging over the taffrail to wave enthusiastically at the first holiday party to catch onto the great ship’s wake.

“And you’ve said yourself they’re rare beasts in these woods,” added Edmund, stretching to grab one of the bright garlands being tossed at the ship’s sides. “I say! These are Aslan Roses aren’t they, Lu?”

“Also called Emperor’s Roses,” she agreed, leaning in to sniff the rich, heady scent. “We had ropes of them decorating the Throne Room at Cair Paravel for our coronation Ed, remember? How on Earth did they manage to find so many so _quickly?_ You don’t suffer from hay fever Eustace, do you?”

“Not that I know of.” The galleon was quite surrounded now by little boats, and if the enthusiasm of the natives for their Emperor was cheering to Caspian, it made a most disconcerting experience for his crew.

“Obstacles enough in these waters,” grumbled Rhince, who had dashed down the maindeck to assume personal charge of the sail handling parties. “Squawkin’ lubbers in small boats! Shouldn’t be bloomin’ let loose! Erlick! Stop luffin’ you incompetent rogue or I’ll lay the lash to yer back with me own fair ‘ands!”

Eustace sniggered. Lucy and Liliandil directed frightened looks to the man who stood, impassive in the face of so much confusion, at the helm. Drinian winked.

“He’ll do no such thing, Your Majesties,” he announced cheerfully, though his smile faded at the unpleasant _clunk_ of a rowing boat striking his beloved galleon square amidships. “Though if he chooses to flog the blas – _blessed_ fool who did _that_ , I shan’t be the man to stop him! Enthusiastic welcomes are all well and good, but they should be confined to dry land – aye, and wide roads, at that!”

“Doubtless you’ll have our good lady repainted whilst we’re ashore,” said Caspian, only half in jest. “Any small damage shan’t be visible for long!”

Drinian laughed. “Oh, I’ll have her emptied out and beached, her keel scraped clean!” he exclaimed: perhaps, Edmund thought, the only person on board to be actually excited by the prospect. “Touching up the prow’s fine paint can be left for Galma, being a matter more of show than substance.”

“Bother!” Eustace grumbled, speaking his cousin’s secret thought. “We don’t have to haul her ashore again, do we? We did that back on Ramandu’s island!”

“Over half a year’s hard sailing ago,” Caspian felt himself compelled to point out, though his own heart had sunk at the prospect. “Besides, there are shipwrights enough at Narrowhaven to carry out the worst of the work - if not to supervise it, which I dare not hope our Captain will leave to any other man!”

“Your Majesty entrusted me with the management of your ship,” said Drinian (not for the first time, Lucy thought) sternly. “And I promised the crew I should see them safely home. I’ll not risk my honour (Lion bless me, I’m sounding like that confounded _Mouse_ now!) on the careless workmanship of a Doorn shipyard boy!”

“Have it your way, my Lord,” said Caspian wearily, adding a stage-whisper to his assembled friends. “What he means, of course, is that he should much rather be sweating and swearing in drydock with his crew than playing His Grace of Etinsmere with us at the castle!”

“That’s likely enough to be true,” the gentleman agreed good-naturedly. “Blast these boats – begging your pardon Ma’am – Lucy. Stand ready, fore and aft! Rhince, we’ll hold her in the castle’s lee if you please!”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n!” Shouts of compliance rang around the ship, and as the sailmen scrambled to gather in and secure the great purple sail two huge anchors were cast out at stem and stern, sploshing through placid waters to catch in the muddy seabed and hold the Dawn Treader on the precise spot her commander desired. Three cheers rang out from the quay; a stream of bunting raced up the flagpole standing proud atop the castle.

“Return salute!” Drinian bellowed, watching with narrowed eyes as a similar flurry of signals chased up the Dawn Treader’s own halyards. Edmund whistled appreciatively.

“And not a word to tell them what to say!” he said admiringly. Drinian grinned.

“Standing orders for entering any friendly port, King Edmund: stand ready to return any greeting given. You’ll be wanting to go ashore immediately I suppose, Sire? That’s the Duke, I think – three points off the larboard bow.”

“I _do_ wish you would use _landsmen’s_ directions, Drinian!” sighed the King as five pairs of eyes scanned the wharf for the point implied.

“Wish you’d remember the mariners’ terms come more easily to me, at that! Rhince! Lower the boat. Their Majesties will go ashore.”

“You ought to come with us, my Lord.” It was less a suggestion than a Royal Command, and by his grimace Drinian knew it. “Why! We cannot instruct our host in what – precisely – is required for our ship and her company!”

“Rhince, you have the ship.” The courtier in him rising to conceal a sailor’s irritation, Drinian followed his passengers down the poop ladder to the maindeck, where the little gig was being lowered in readiness. “Grant the fellows their tot; and keep a watch maintained. I’ll send instruction before nightfall, if I can’t return myself.”

“You won’t,” Caspian muttered at his side. “My Lords Argoz, Revelian, Mavramorn and Rhoop – descend with us and greet your old shipmate! He will be the more delighted to see us for having friends thought lost for so long at our side! Down you go, Lucy. We must be ship-shape and have the senior officer last to over the side, you know!”

They were cheered all the way to the low pier, and as Caspian stepped ashore men and women alike knelt in homage, pulling wide-eyed infants down as the cries went up, bringing a tear to every Narnian eye (even Drinian’s). “Long live King Caspian! Aslan bless our Emperor!”

“My Lord Bern.” Caspian extended a hand to the burly, richly-robed gentleman at the throng’s head, as composed as if he had been expecting such a reception (so different, Lucy remembered with a shudder, to that of Pug and his rabble on their journey east). “It gives Us great pleasure to see your Lordship again.”

“Your Majesty! To see _you_ is a far greater joy!” declared the Duke of the Lone Island fervently. “Your subjects’ thoughts have turned east in the Dawn Treader’s wake every day since your departure, Sire!”

“We have experienced many wonders, my Lord, but we may talk of them later,” said Caspian kindly, raising him when Bern would have remained on his knees. “For the present, pray make welcome these gentlemen, your former shipmates.”

Bern, raising his eyes for the first time from his master, frankly goggled. “Argoz?” he croaked. “And – by Aslan, Revelian, old friend! Mavramorn! And – and _Rhoop?_ ” 

“When I was worthy of a name, that I bore,” mumbled the shattered wreck stooped between Argoz and Mavramorn’s upright figures. “You were wise to remain here, Bern! The horrors I have seen…”

“My good Lord Bern,” cut in Caspian (who had heard those horrors recited so often even his patience was quite worn out). “Together with these three of our father’s friends, at the island which marks the Beginning of the End of the World we came upon this lady, who is returned, at our most ardent plea, to rule beside Us in Narnia as Empress and Queen. My Lady Liliandil, bid you welcome to your own dominions.”

“Lady.” Bern knelt again to kiss the hand extended, at a nudge from Lucy, toward him. “In the name of all the islanders, bid thee most heartily welcome! We and all we have are at your service.”

“Your Lordship is most gracious.” Now the test was come, and Liliandil rose to meet it with all the effortless grace of her celestial blood. Caspian looked fit to burst with pride. “I wish only to show myself worthy of the great honour my lord the King has done me.”

“Small risk of your failing in that,” murmured that King, bestowing upon her a look of such tenderness that many women in the throng sighed and swooned. “Tell us, my Lord: what is the condition of these islands now? Has the strain of restoring them to good Narnian government been excessive? You _look_ hale enough!"

“We have a stout people, Sire, who have risen royally to the proclamation of their ancient liberties under Your Majesty’s protection,” Bern declared, (conveniently overlooking, Eustace considered, the fact that Caspian’s _protection_ had been absent for more than a year). “Will Your Majesties – my Lords – not accompany me to the castle? All that we can offer you and yours, we shall give freely.”

“Your shipwrights may live to regret that generous offer, Bern,” said Caspian with a sly grin aside. “I fear our mighty Dawn Treader has undergone a trying year in our service and her Captain, I dare swear, will have a list of pressing requirements to test your generous hospitality!”

“Our shipyards are at your disposal, my Lord Drinian,” Bern promised expansively. “Orders will be given that all men are to consider themselves under your direct instruction, or that of your doughty deputy.”

“But we must insist, my Lord, that you grant yourself at least some respite from labour,” added the King sternly.

“I’ll take some leave ashore, Your Majesty, and grant each of the men ten days at least together at a stretch – with your permission.”

“Granted,” agreed Caspian instantly. “Now, my Lord Duke, we have discovered a nest of pirates lurking off the south-eastern shores of this island. Pray send out your forces to settle Master Pug for once and all: but not today!

“This is a day for celebration, and We would have you proclaim this day a public holiday for all our good subjects. The Dawn Treader has reached home waters at last, and come! You must have endless questions for your old comrades! To the castle, friends!


	10. A Shipmate's Farewell

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There's a rotten apple in every barrel. A wise captain will always be aware of this fact...

Shore leave passed Lucy in a whirl: for Caspian must be shown to every part of his dominions, and like his bride, his Ancient predecessors must be seen with him. Even Eustace grumbled he should sooner be in the drydock beneath the castle’s walls, heaving on ropes and hacking at encrustations hard as pebbles against the Dawn Treader’s exposed belly. 

She doubted he meant it, for during the first two weeks they saw Drinian only after dark, trudging back to the fortress grimy and exhausted but unfailingly cheerful as he reported on rapid progress in the complicated, messy business of a galleon’s full refit.

“You must take some time yourself now, my Lord.” When Caspian resorted to his friend’s land title there was no appeal, and everyone knew it. “Bern intends to carry us to his estates on Avra in the morning, and as his old friend Tririan’s son he would welcome you in the party no less dearly than myself. Rhince is entirely competent to manage affairs in your absence.”

“I should never have appointed him to his place, were he not.” The iron-studded double gates of Narrowhaven castle loomed ahead of them. Below, beyond the town walls, torches flared fore, aft and at the masthead of the royal galleon, spiking out long shadows before the men still active on her decks. Drinian frowned over his shoulder, wistfully recalling how much simpler his life had once been, a mere seaman in the service of a foreign king.

_Simpler, but how much less satisfying?_ he reminded himself sternly. Squaring his shoulders, he stepped aside as Eustace pounded on the gates for admittance, and summoned a merry smile.

“Very well, Your Majesty. Since the Duke’s so kind as to extend his invitation to a rough sailor, I shall cross to Bernstead with your party,” he said to smiles and cheers from his friends. “You’ll allow that I send word to Rhince before sailing? He returns from his leave at midnight, or thereabout.”

“You, soldier! Carry this message to Our Royal vessel in Our name!” The regal command rang across the courtyard, bringing the shaggy-haired fellow who had first barred admittance to his Emperor a year and more before scurrying with a polished helmet in his hand. “That Master Rhince be instructed by Us, and by my Lord Drinian, Our Lord High Admiral, to assume command of all works aboard the Dawn Treader during his Captain’s richly-earned leave. Come to Our apartments when your errand is done.”

“I say, Caspian,” whispered Edmund as the man bolted without pause to collect his cloak. “There wasn’t any need for that high-and-mighty tone!”

“I must accustom myself to being instantly obeyed again,” replied the King, his attempt at severity rather spoiled by a twinkle in his eye being caught by a lantern’s inconsistent flare. Their laughter resounded from the walls as they passed under the watch tower and into the musty gloom of the fortress’s keep. “It were best to start with a common solider before I must face Trumpkin and all my Lords of Council! Ah, Bern! All’s prepared for our journey tomorrow? Drinian has finally consented, at our _continual nagging_ – is it not so, my Lord? – to pass at least these few days idle with us.”

“You’ll soon be wishing me back aboard,” Drinian assured them, his determined effort to stifle a yawn proving a miserable failure. “No Sire, I’ll not join you for supper. We worked hard today, and I’m fit for naught but my cot! At what hour do we ride?”

“Six.” Bern’s reply met a chorus of groans, loudly led by Eustace. “Two hours will see us at King Peter’s Point where my vessel awaits, and an hour’s sail from there will deliver Your Majesties to my lands. And never fret for your ship, my Lord Drinian! Should your stout deputy have need, a fast sloop can be at Bernstead in half of no time! Bid you goodnight then, if you shan’t join us for so much as a cup of wine! This way, Your Majesties! We have a good fire burning in the former Governor’s parlour.”

*

Bern’s manor proved to be a modest two-storey structure of timber and stone, built around a leafy courtyard and defended by a shallow moat unlikely (as Edmund pointed out in a whisper) to hold off a force of Talking Mice. Rosy, well-dressed servants lined the yard to cheer Caspian’s arrival and a splendid spread of fresh bread, jam, scones and coffee awaited in the Great Hall. Nothing so informal had been offered on Doorn, and for the change everyone was deeply grateful.

“This is become my refuge from the demands of my office,” Bern told them, shaking the last crumb of crust from his golden beard. “Come, Rhoop, no demons lurk in our shadows! My wife will show all to their chambers, and we have fine views across the other islands from here. This afternoon I’ll show you the extent of our estates; and tonight, the finest musicians on Avra are engaged to play.”

“We have no desire to burden your Lordship with expense in our honour,” Caspian began anxiously. Bern waved away the very notion.

“All Avra shares the expense and the honour of her Emperor’s coming, Sire! Tomorrow, if the weather stays fair, we shall ride toward the highest point of the island, known as The Crag, where stands a ruined fortress…”

“It was perfectly serviceable when we last came,” Edmund muttered. Lucy nudge him hard in the ribs.

“About a thousand years ago! It might at least need redecorating by now.”

“Why, The Crag fell from useful service hundreds of years ago Your Majesties, but it makes a picturesque spot for a picnic.” Bern’s wife stepped forward to guide her guests to their own apartments. “Sara! Betha! Lina! Run ahead and have Their Majesties’ doors stand open! The evenings are cold this time of year, Sire. You’ll soon feel the benefit of good fires and hot mulled wine.”

As her Captain and passengers dined at the Duke’s private table and the torches that flared in her sconces burned low late at night, the Dawn Treader’s high sides crawled with the dark shapes of that half of her crew newly returned from their leave, finishing a first day’s labour in place of the men now carousing in the taverns and inns a few streets back from the wharf. Rhince’s stentorian bellow hastened the slow and the slacking from their labours. Men called out to each other and laughed in raucous, companionable tones.

The decks cleared, and the drydock where the galleon lay was swallowed up by silence.

Only the quickest eye might have detected the small wavering of thick shadow beneath the dragon’s growling mouth. The sensitive ears of the scrawny dogs sniffing along the walls for a scrap of ham or a discarded bone alone might have picked up the faintest vibration in the air as a single human sighed. Something crackled and a pinprick of light flared from a crude tinderbox, breaking the narrow, intent features of Pittencream into momentarily sharp relief.

Cautious, one hand shielding the flame so it cast directly into his path, the sailor crept from the protective blackness of the ship’s huge shadow, his feet sliding on the sea-sodden rollers that bore her weight. 

No lookout cried the alarm. One small, half-bald mutt yapped a warning when he came too close, and someone bawled a curse through an open door at the noise. But no head appeared.

No dockyard idler or exhausted shipmate loomed up to thrust out a restraining hand. Turning away from the taverns where last week he had made his plans, Pittencream slipped like a phantom into the grimy narrow alleys of the lower town.

Nobody missed him until morning.

Rhince set up a hue and cry that had all Narrowhaven in a frenzy, but at the day’s end he threw up his hands, confessed himself defeated and commandeered a fast, ill-kept sloop for the short crossing to Bernstead. He arrived after dark, just as the household sat at dinner in a fine vaulted chamber, its ceiling painted with the constellations as seen from southern Narnia. 

The host, alarmed by the commotion in his courtyard, rose with a hand on his dagger, ready to challenge the disturber of his Emperor’s feast; but at the sight of his deputy, a tell-tale vein at the side of his neck bulging in warning of barely-repressed temper, Drinian shoved aside his chair, rose to his full, commanding height and asked, in a tone that could have sliced through steel:

“What is it, Rhince?”

“The beggar’s run, Cap’n.” No help for it. Rhince squared his shoulders and set back his head, visibly braced for the coming storm. “We’ve ‘ad the town on its ear Sir, but ‘e’s gone and that’s a fact.”

“Run?” asked Eustace and Liliandil in unison.

“Deserted.” He said it so levelly even Caspian gaped.

“Who?” he asked, low-voiced. Rhince bristled.

“Who but that ‘alf-rotted, scurvy, skinny-necked son of a whor – _washerwoman_ Pittencream, Your Majesty!”

“How does Rhince know what his mother did?” demanded Eustace, shrill in the silence. Bern snorted.

“More to the matter: what, my Lord Drinian, is to be done about this faithless shipmate?”

“There’s not much that _can_ be done, if you ask me,” put in Edmund sensibly. “We can’t hang about off Narrowhaven forever, waiting for the Duke’s guard to fetch him back in chains!”

“I see no reason to delay our sailing, Your Majesties.”

Every eye turned with suspicion his way. “You’re taking this jolly calmly, Drinian,” said Lucy, voicing every other Narnian’s thought.

“Were I surprised Ma’am, I should be cussing and bawling as loud as ever a captain did, but there’s one bad hen in every coop! Let Pittencream go Rhince, with none of the reward His Majesty promised those better-hearted of his shipmates! I thought he might wait until we reached land beyond your dominions Sire, but that he should fail to reach Narnia is no surprise to me.”

Rhince regarded his commander with unabashed awe. “Then I’m to call off the ‘ounds, Cap’n?” he questioned, uncertainty at war with regret in every word.

“Not necessarily: but _we_ are not the sufferers, should they fail to turn up their quarry,” answered Drinian, flashing an absent-minded smile to his hostess as she passed the wine flagon his way. “He’s no kin in Narnia that we could trace, and I shall _not_ be cajoled into considering him a loss to the ship! My Lord Bern, have you a corner to spare this unfortunate fellow tonight? Boson is quite competent to manage the ship for a few hours more, and I’d be an angry captain indeed were any other man to follow Master Pittencream’s example.”

“Impossible!” declared Caspian, to whom even the prospect of Pittencream’s flight had been that not ten minutes ago. “Aye Rhince, come and dine with us, my Lady Duchess has provided ample even for another sailor’s hearty appetite! Very well: we shall sail westward as intended at the beginning of next week. Pittencream is a knave, and we are well rid of him!”

“You’ll get no argument from Rynelf on that, Your Majesty.” Too relieved to be much puzzled by the composure of his commander’s reaction, the big man subsided onto a bench pulled forward by Eustace. “Nor from me, neither! Aye, thank ‘ee, Queen Lucy, that venison pie with a cup o’ wine, will go down a rare treat! Do we keep the town guard huntin’, Sir?”

“Aye. So long as we remain ashore it’ll do the scoundrel no harm to know the fear o’ capture and the lash.” Drinian chuckled at his second-in-command’s outraged cluck. “But if they find no trace, I shan’t be disappointed!”

“And should he appear after your departure, my Lord?” Bern enquired. Drinian shared a thoughtful look with his King.

“Most likely he’d appear in breach of Lone Islands law,” said Caspian slowly.

“Which is a matter for the justices of Narrowhaven,” Drinian continued.

“And when _we_ are done with the villain?” Bern demanded.

“He’s no loss to Narnia!” said Edmund indignantly. 

“And if it is not my Lord High Admiral’s will to have him flogged through the Fleet…”

“And then keel-hauled for good measure,” Lucy continued on Caspian’s behalf.

“He may safely be left to make whatever shift he may,” the King concluded. Rhince growled massively through a mouthful of pie.

“’E’s a competent seaman, Your Majesty,” he admitted, reluctance making the words creak against his throat. “Could work ‘is passage wherever ‘e chose to go.”

“Anywhere but Narnia, I bet,” said Eustace happily. “I don’t know what _keel-hauling_ is, but it sounds deuced unpleasant!”

“The miscreant being bound, cast over the starboard side and heaved on a chain by his shipmates to the port rail?” Drinian grimaced. “Unpleasant enough to turn an iron stomach! I saw it done once, with a scurvy mutineer - which is the reason I make hanging the manner of execution for any like-minded scoundrel that should infest the Narnian fleet."

“Mutiny?” Liliandil’s spoon dropped into her empty pudding dish. “Unthinkable!”

“So was desertion,” said Lucy seriously, “until just now.”

“Not to Drinian,” Caspian corrected, shaking his head until his golden mass of curls stood on end. “You never cease to astound me, old friend! You _knew_ Pittencream would run, and you said naught!”

“Your Majesty would have set a guard on the entryport, and how then would we be rid o’ the blackguard?”

“Drinian!” His future Queen shot from her seat, long fingers pointing theatrically. “You _wanted_ him to desert!”

“Not _wanted_ as such, Ma’am, no,” Drinian answered, far too comfortably. “But – well, a wise captain ought always to know the temper of every being aboard his ship! Pittencream’s a fractious soul, and when the rest of us speak of the World’s End, what was he to do? Confess he never saw it? His pride would never permit it! Let him go elsewhere and astonish the gullible with his tales. We’ll hear tell of him soon enough, I’ll wager. He’s not manner of man to lie low forever.”

“More's the bloomin’ pity,” muttered Rhince into his goblet. Caspian raised his in reply.

“We all,” he said, content to wink at an act of treason in this instance and this one only, “can only drink to that!”


	11. Lest Old Acquaintance...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Familiar territories bring familiar faces. They’re not always in the places Caspian and his Captain might expect. Lucy and the boys are about to learn a little more about Drinian's earlier years...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The minions of Count Vissarin have their origins in the mignons of King Henri III of France, who scandalised 16th century society by attending Court balls in female dress; and in Piers Gaveston, the beloved favourite of England’s Edward II, whose immense influence (and the jealousy it provoked) over the King led directly to his murder. Attitudes amongst the characters better reflect the mores of those times (and of 1940's England) than they do the 21st century's.

“Your Majesty is truly welcomed to these islands! Indeed, we are even more delighted than we are relieved to see Your Highness safely restored from those fearful seas beyond our neighbour isles!”

“I assure you my Lord Vissarin, those distant seas contain no greater terrors than these more familiar waters!” cried Caspian (conveniently forgetting, Edmund thought, sea monsters, islands where nightmares come to life, exploding islands and the cursed land of Deathwater) as he wrung the perfectly unblemished hand presented by the overlord of the Confederation of the Seven Isles. “And from those farthest seas I bring a Queen for Narnia: my Lady Liliandil here, who has done the highest honour to Us and Ours in leaving her own land for Our sake.”

“Honoured lady!” When the Count turned, so to did his array of young and handsome attendants, all attired in scarlet and gold and dripping with jewels like their master. “Accept of these poor islands our warmest felicitations! Sire, as a man not long married myself, I dare pledge on my possession of this estate that your gentle lady will prove as great a blessing to you as Her Most Serene Highness is to me.”

Several of the young men sniggered, but Count Vissarin of Brenn merely tutted at their impertinence. “Oh, I _see!_ ” whispered Eustace to his cousins. “ _Not quite the marrying kind_ , as your mother would say!”

“Our sincerest congratulations to you, my Lord.” Good manners ensured Caspian _said_ the expected thing, even if he might not always be thinking it. “The matter was of no pressing concern, I believe you said when last We had the pleasure of your very generous hospitality?”

“Aslan, no!” The Count, Edmund suspected, was twenty-five at least: an age at which most princes, dukes and ruling counts thought it wise to secure their succession. “I have a perfectly charming nephew – Robrin, present yourself to His Majesty! – with whom I might proudly entrust the comital coronet, but the surest alliances between states are those bound by _matrimony_ , don’t you agree? Your Majesty must have made a very favourable agreement with my Lady Liliandil’s guardian…”

“Nothing of the kind!” said Lucy indignantly. Caspian coughed.

“My Lord Count, permit that I present Queen Lucy of Narnia, named by her subjects the Valiant, and her brother King Edmund, the Just, of ancient times,” he cried, embarrassment raising his tone almost as high as his trilling host’s. The Count's party, who had all been staring (rather rudely) were suddenly all awed attention.

“Gracious Majesties! The honour to our islands is redoubled!” cried the Count, almost banging his head on the cobbles, so low did he bow. “My wife will be most _particularly_ delighted – we so seldom have _company of distinction_ as she calls it – and we do seem so terribly _rustic_ to her! Norlan! Norlan, be a dear and run ahead to the Residence - tell Her Serenity who comes!

“And Sire I must insist you tell us all about your extraordinary voyages! Grooms! Gracious, where _are_ they? Bring horses at once – the finest we have for the ladies! My wife will be most _especially_ delighted to see _you_ , Sire, and my Lord Drinian too! I’ll wager my coronet and all of Norlan’s diamonds _she_ is the last person you should ever expect to meet here!”

*

“Aren’t you in the least _curious_ , Drinian?” Caspian demanded. His friend shrugged.

“Not half so curious as the fluttering fools would like, if Your Majesty will excuse my bluntness.”

“My Majesty expects naught else of you.” Caspian clouted him affectionately on the shoulder. “Still: if you are not avid for a glimpse of this unfortunate countess, I am!”

The Narnian party had been escorted into a tapestried chamber on the ground floor of Brenn’s comital residence, plied with spiced wine and biscuits (which Eustace bit into eagerly only to spit straight back out, finding them ninety-nine percent pure sugar), there to await formal reception by the Count and Countess in their Pillared Hall above. “So am I!” said Lucy with feeling. “Imagine being married to _him!_ ”

“I daresay she has a tedious time of it, with his escort for ever tripping at her heels” agreed the King seriously. “Did you see Messire Norlan’s nails? Better polished than any Narnian lady’s!”

“And the _perfume!_ ” said Edmund. “I think they must _bathe_ in it!”

“Rosewater and lavender. Very good for the complexion, according to the one with all the rouge. I forget his name.” It was impossible to judge whether there was more of disdain or bemusement in Drinian’s words. Liliandil smiled serenely.

“I must try it, my Lord,” she said mildly. “And I wonder what they use for cream? Did you not notice, they have the palest, softest hands imaginable!”

“Never hauled on a rope or fought a wet sail in their lives.” The Dawn Treader’s bronzed Captain regarded his work and weather toughened palms complacently. Lucy chortled.

“Goodness, they’d have the hysterics at the very thought!” she exclaimed. “They’re proper lapdogs -put them in front of a nice fire, feed them titbits and pet them. They’re very _decorative_ , but I don’t suppose they’ve done a day’s proper work in their lives.”

“Your Majesty does them a disservice,” Caspian told her solemnly. “Those primped _smirkers_ are the inner council of Brenn. I’ll wager Vissarin _had_ to wed, to quell murmurings of discontent among the other islands.”

“Brenn’s supremacy _is_ traditional within the Confederation,” Edmund reminded him.

“But not guaranteed.” Someone tapped lightly on the door, a neat brown head poking through the smallest gap. “Ah, thank you, yes – you are come to escort us to Their Eminences, I see! Lead the way! The people of Redhaven must be delighted to have a Countess established again, eh?”

The uniformed usher, his throat afoam with the kind of lace collar Caspian could not imagine his own attendants at Cair Paravel ever enduring, bowed with lips pursed and eyes blank. “Evidently not, then,” whispered Edmund. “Golly! I wonder who she was before?”

“His Most Serene and Imperial Majesty Caspian: King of Narnia; Lord of Cair Paravel; and Emperor of the Lone Islands, with companions!” The grandiose announcement boomed off the hall’s decorative columns, all warm red marble veined with silver.

“Cousin.” The woman who rose from the Consort’s chair was certainly prettier than the lounging assortment of young men clustered behind the grander seat two steps above hers where Vissarin perched, although noticeably less extravagant in her russet velvet robe and emerald satin underskirt. “Gladly do I bid you welcome to the court of Redhaven.”

“Anelia? Good cousin, this is a wonder indeed!” Caspian bolted forward to take her hands, a delighted smile breaking across his handsome face. “My Lord Vissarin, you are a fortunate man to have won the hand of the Daughter of Archenland!”

“Did I not declare Your Majesty would never imagine seeing _her_ enthroned here?” Vissarin clapped his fat little hands and the gaggle of lavishly-robed courtiers behind him simpered. “King Nain’s daughter! None of _our_ House ever made such a match before!”

“Fair Cousin, allow that I present these, my dearest companions.” It was all Caspian could do to remember the proper etiquette as he faced the daughter of his mother’s regal brother. “First, my betrothed bride Liliandil, Lady of the Eastern Sea.”

“Lady.” _Even Susan wouldn’t be noticed in a room with these two_ , Lucy thought, not without a twinge of resentment. Liliandil’s golden beauty was matched in every way by the midnight radiance of the Countess, whose ivory skin needed no floral waters or cream to retain its perfection. “You are fortunate indeed to win the heart of my excellent cousin. Give me leave – as kin – to wish you happiness and prosperity.”

Edmund and Eustace, gaping like stunned fish, were presented; Lucy found herself being raked with an imperious dark gaze that raised every hackle she possessed (and a few she hadn’t even known about). Only when the Princess of Archenland turned her cool stare to the final member of their party did the chill edge melt from her perfection.

“My Lord Drinian,” she said, lingering over his name like one relishing its taste. “It has been some years since I last had this pleasure.”

“The pleasure is mine, Highness.” He bent from the waist, gently lifting the slender, long-fingered hand she offered to his lips. “My Lord Vissarin declared we should be astonished to meet his Countess, but I hardly expected the surprise to be so pleasant as this.”

“You have lost none of your courtly charm, my Lord of Etinsmere.” She made no effort to retrieve her hand, and he appeared to have quite forgotten about releasing it as they smiled at each other. “We must talk during your time here. Much has passed since we last had the opportunity.”

“Splendid, I _knew_ you would be pleased to meet again!” The lady’s husband positively bounced on his cushioned throne with glee. “Your Majesty, do you not think the air of Redhaven agrees with your cousin? Is she not more beautiful here than ever she was at Anvard?”

“I never had the honour of attending my uncle’s court in Archenland, Eminence,” Caspian replied with a grin. “But my friend here passed much of his boyhood in that kingdom during the reign of the usurper, Miraz...”

“Well then! My Lord Drinian, what say you?”

“Why, that the Princess Anelia was the chief ornament of her father’s court, as the Countess of Brenn is of her husband’s,” Drinian parried with a grin. The lady’s low, smoky laughter rang out, twining through the titters of her husband’s courtiers.

“A diplomat’s answer, my Lord! Come, you must all sit with us, and talk of the Eastern Seas! Are there _truly_ monsters lurking among the fires at the End of the World? No? How disappointing, it sounded so _exciting_ in the stories! Husband, we shall host a ball: I insist upon it! Summon the lords of the isles! Cousin, I beg you of your kindness, indulge me! Seven small islands so far from anywhere seldom enjoy the _civilising influence_ of an outside society!”

*

“I don’t like her any better than I do him,” said Eustace decidedly “Stuck-up!”

“I wonder very much that she ever agreed to the match,” Caspian mused, not before peering through the keyhole of the pretty second-floor parlour that connected all the rooms of the Narnians’ suite. “I know it sounds _rude_ , Eustace, but the Seven Isles _are_ somewhat _rustic_ in comparison with the Northern Kingdoms; and Anelia, as I understand it, was greatly spoiled by my uncle’s favour.”

“Did precisely as she pleased, Your Majesty.” Drinian’s lips twitched. “I’ll confess, astonishment was the smallest part o’ what I felt to see her here! I never believed she might willingly leave a court where, in the absence of an anointed Queen, she could effectively reign.”

“I can see why she might think it a come-down, but I agree with Scrubb. P’raps she keeps her nose so high in the air to avoid the reek of all those ghastly perfumes!”

“Honestly Ed, you’re as bad as he is,” said Lucy, quite automatically.

“Perhaps... my uncle’s health has not been strong in recent years,” Caspian said slowly. “If Corin – my cousin, Anelia’s brother you know - were to marry and breed...”

“No place at his court for a stout-hearted princess?” Liliandil suggested.

“Anelia would never willingly walk a pace behind another lady.”

“True!” The children goggled and the Star’s Daughter, from her chair in the corner, almost smiled. “Still,” Drinian added, far too candid to conceal his distaste. “To marry the ladylike count of a far-distant island... _that_ I should never have expected of her!”

“You and she seemed very cosy.” It was unkingly to pout because his courtier – his oldest and truest friend – had been more smilingly received by his near relation than himself, but perhaps it could be blamed on the flowery scents that pervaded the entire palace, got into one’s nostrils and caught in the very fibres of one’s clothes. Caspian pouted.

“I was marched to Anvard regularly over ten years when the kindness of King Nain was my staff,” Drinian reminded them seriously. “Being of an age with Prince Corin and Her Highness, I was more often in their company than that of our elders.”

“Anelia ought to have been the prince,” Caspian confided, forgetting his pique in mischief. “She’s twice the wit of Corin: aye, and three times the stomach, too! You see! Drinian does not dispute it!”

“Never wise to dispute with one’s sovereign, Sire. Especially when he’s demonstrably right,” Despite being an affianced man the King could be, to use Queen Lucy’s word, quite remarkably _dense_ at times. Frequently frustrated, Drinian was willing to be grateful for the fact now. “And if you’ll excuse me, I should return to the ship. There’s work to be done and Rhince has not – yet – had instruction from me.”

“You’ll sleep afloat then, I daresay.” Caspian grimaced. “Oh, very _well!_ I can hardly condemn a man for escaping this perniciously _frilled_ place as much as he can: or evading that _talk_ with my cousin! Once she has one cornered, she so seldom lets one go!”

*

Although she rarely left the Narnians in peace, Lucy soon found herself liking the Countess of Brenn much more than she had expected, even if she could never see her without puzzling. Though she plainly preferred the company of men – and men from beyond her husband’s islands, at that – she was generous to the Narnian ladies, and on the afternoon of the grand ball which would mark their farewell to Redhaven she came to their apartments with two burly servants heaving a padlocked wooden chest to be opened for Lucy and Liliandil.

“A Countess cannot adorn herself, but a Queen and a lady about to become Queen should never wear fewer jewels than the gentlemen,” she said, and Lucy ached for what she must endure with her husband in thrall to his bevy of ever-present friends. “You shall have no such difficulties with my cousin, dear Liliandil, but remember: a ruler must never have _favourites_ , unless they be men of my Lord Drinian’s stamp. A wife has no cause to dread such a presence at her husband’s elbow!”

“Caspian would never permit any wife to step between himself and his friend.” The Star’s Daughter fingered a string of egg-sized emeralds with reverence. “You have these beautiful things Anelia, and yet you wear a single pearl chain and no rings!”

“Oh, these are hardly _mine!_ ” The laugh, low and appealing, was twisted with anger. “No, these are the trinkets Vissarin delights in distributing amongst his _pets_. Robrin requested that you be given your choice of them this evening as a mark of our especial admiration for Narnia. Robrin is not like his uncle – you’ll have noticed the similarity in age? My husband had a sister more than twenty years older than himself – the daughter to the first of his father’s six wives. When Robrin inherits Brenn...”

“Which he may not, if you have a son,” said Liliandil innocently. Anelia squealed.

“Oh, my dear! _That_ will never happen! But enough of my troubles: tell me more of your voyage! I never saw such a vessel as your Dawn Treader. Caspian and Drinian are right to be so very proud of her.”


	12. The Terrors Of Society

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Lucy and Caspian are less than enamoured of Seven Isles society. They think they have problems...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next three chapters reference events that will be described more fully in my other fic, Once A Lord of Narnia. Drinian had quite a time of it before assuming command of the Dawn Treader....

The ball, despite the crush of curious islanders in their gaudy finery avid for a glimpse of the Narnian King, proved all the Countess had said of the tedium of Brenn-ish society. Lucy was thankful for the company of her friends and stayed determinedly with them at the Count’s dais, except when forced by politeness to accept the unblemished soft hand of a councillor in the dance. The Count himself lounged all evening on his comital chair, watching his wife spin and step with first one visitor than the next, shunning his friends for those she chose to consider as hers.

“Enough of these stately _pacings!_ ” she cried at last, tossing back the loose mane of her sable hair, sparkling with tiny diamonds on fine gold chains. “Husband, what nonsense have you spoken to these poor scrapers and scratchers you call the _court orchestra_? Cousin! Does not Your Majesty _ache_ for the freedom of a jig?”

Caspian wagged a finger. “Your Highness must excuse me. I am a sedate dancer, not a madcap!”

The Countess ignored him. “Come, Vissarin, I _must_ have a jig! You know I detest these slow, simpering dances! I should call for Robrin, but you know he _cannot_ take a step without crushing his partner’s toes!”

“My Lord Drinian has been known to represent Us in this arena with the same success he shows in matters of policy,” Caspian suggested with a smile to soothe her disappointment. Count Vissarin clapped his pudgy hands.

“There! If you, my Lord, are agreeable...”

“Gladly, Sir: if her Serene Highness will allow...”

Anelia was halfway to the floor before the words were out of his mouth, a pleased smile on the flawless oval face that peeked back over her shoulder. “The pleasure will be mine. I seem to recall, my Lord, that you dance remarkable well, for a tar.”

“Your Highness may also remember the strictures I endured from my aunt on the subject.” They looked well together, Caspian noticed idly, moving with the fluid ease of long familiarity. As Vissarin called for a merry tune and a dozen other couples scurried to the floor, he studied them: his best friend and his cousin, barely known and still less trusted, sharing a smile that was one part flirtation, one part mischief, and a third on which he had no desire to speculate.

Anelia was beautiful. She was royal. Her name had been raised in his own council chamber when first Cornelius and Trufflehunter had begun to fret about his begetting an heir (by which they meant finding a bride). And then, no less suddenly, it had slipped from their considerations.

He had not liked the idea. His mother’s niece! A cousin! A _girl!_

 _Well_ , he excused himself. He _had_ been barely sixteen; and had hardly come near a lady younger than his nurse in the whole of his life!

They danced exceptionally well. She leapt higher than most of the men, her head thrown back, hands outstretched. He moved with a lithe, powerful grace a world removed from the frantic hopping of his less courtly fellows. And when he lifted his partner by the waist and spun her, the Countess was raised high above any other lady in the ballroom.

“Oh, good show, Drinian!” exclaimed Edmund enthusiastically. “Jolly good show!”

“Oh, do be _quiet_ , Ed!” cried Lucy, clapping in time to the music. “Goodness! The other people had better move back, her feet are going to hit someone in a minute!”

Somehow Anelia’s silk-shod toes managed to avoid the nearest dancers before coming down as daintily as a doll’s to the floor. Eyes shining, she caught the hands of her partner and swung the length of the ballroom with him, and Edmund was unsurprised to see the other dancers not merely moving aside but actually stopping to admire the skills acquired by two children of the Archenlandish court.

“My wife considers us shockingly _backward_ in these more _refined_ arts,” Vissarin informed his guests, sounding (Lucy thought) quite complacent. “And it must be conceded, she lacks for regular partners with the skill of your shipmate.”

The music rose to a flourishing finish, the dancers spinning and leaping to a stop directly before the dais. Falling into a curtsy as her companion bowed, the Countess let fall a shriek of real, honest laughter.

People gaped. “I wonder if they’ve ever seen her happy before,” Lucy whispered. “She must have a ghastly life!”

“Indeed.” Caspian was busy watching his cousin’s animated face and the admission slipped out, bypassing his defences. “She was once considered – by certain of the Council – as a possible consort for me, you know.”

“Fancy marrying your cousin!” said Edmund.

“Horrid!” said Lucy and Eustace together.

“It is allowed though, isn’t it?”

“Oh yes” Caspian agreed. “Caspian the Conqueror wed his cousin; and _his_ son, Caspian the Confused, married his heir to a cousin as well. And (of course) the alliance with Archenland is historically of great value to Narnia.”

“But?” Liliandil hinted, almost too serene with the subject for his liking. Caspian shrugged.

“I’ve not the remotest idea,” he fibbed. “Perhaps that I was barely sixteen, and two years my cousin’s junior, was considered an impediment: to say naught of our shared Telmarine and Archenlandish blood.”

“Hardly likely!” Edmund scoffed. “I say! That was jolly good dancing, you two!”

They both had the good grace to appear at least a little breathless, the lady summoning a liveried servant with drinks and handing a fine-stemmed glass to the gentleman, her fingers delicately brushing against his. “We danced often at my father’s court, King Edmund, when my Lord of Etinsmere could be persuaded to quit the sea,” she said, dragging her bright eyes his way with obvious regret. “My Lady of Westerwood never forgot, her nephew was born to the palace as much as the ocean.”

“Aunt Katharina would have seen me a professional courtier.” Drinian could imagine few worse fates (unless being trapped for ever at Redhaven). Caspian laughed.

“There’s more to such a profession than fine dancing, and her nephew has too frank a manner to ever be its master!” he exclaimed. “Lion Alive my dear Count, that’s no insult to the most dependably honest friend a sovereign ever had! Drinian’s complete inability to murmur a bland answer is invaluable to me – and to Narnia.”

“Still, you have not forgot all your courtly ways at sea, my Lord,” Anelia murmured.

“My aunt once told me, Madam, that a lesson well learned is never entirely forgotten.”

“Ugh!” muttered Lucy. “She’s flirting with him!”

“Must say, Lu, I thought _he_ was flirting with _her_ ,” Edmund corrected.

“What _is_ flirting?” enquired Liliandil helplessly as the Countess patted Drinian’s cheek.

“The Lady of Westerwood was wise,” she said.

“Aye.” Again they smiled, and to Caspian it seemed their company faded away.

“Lion bless me,” he murmured. “What a fool I was!”

“Why, Caspian dear?” asked Lucy, looking concerned.

“Hmm? Oh! Nothing, Lucy – nothing at all!” And then, more quietly, so she should not hear again. “I wonder. I really do wonder!”

*

“Golly, I’m _melting!_ ”

“I see an open doorway beyond this crowd, Queen Lucy,” Caspian murmured, sidling up at her shoulder. “What say you we seek an opportunity to slip through it?”

“Yes, please!” the girl replied fervently, slapping her hand down into his. With a smile the King ducked his head and plunged forward into the throng, firing apologies left and right as startled citizens were jolted out of his path. “Aslan, a breeze!” she heard him gasp; and a moment later, a delicious gust of cool night air danced across her glowing face.

“Sssshhhh!” Lucy spied it the instant she looked up, and when Caspian followed her pointing finger he identified it too. On the wall directly opposite, beyond an ornate fountain, its waters gushing from the mouths of four friendly-looking dragons, two large shadows were swaying, cast up by the moonlight. The King froze with one foot still hovering inches above the cobbles. 

“Oh!” he murmured. “I rather think we’re interrupting.”

Lifting their feet high, as if they expected their footfalls to be heard, they backed slowly toward the doorway. The owner of the smaller shadow – slim, willowy, undoubtedly female – whimpered.

Her companion – taller, broad about the shoulder and no less unmistakably a man – sighed. “Truly Anelia, you knew my answer before the words were spoken.”

Caspian and Lucy were stopped as completely as if the White Witch of old had risen to turn them both to stone. Only the King’s lips moved, to silently form the speaker’s name.

_Drinian._

“Am I so much less appealing now?” The Countess of Breen was crying – or rather, Lucy decided unsympathetically, she wanted her companion to believe she was. She watched his arm lift in silhouette, moving to rest over the shoulders of the lady. He chuckled.

And though she didn’t understand why, she shivered, feeling the sound ripple through her.

“Never that! But you’re wed; I’m betrothed; and a Lord of Etinsmere, an Admiral of Narnia, is not the same man as a common officer of King Nain’s fleet.”

“Wed?” She almost spat the word. “I am less to Vissarin than the runt of his duckhound’s newest litter! Have you never longed to be _held_ , Drinian?”

“Aye.” There was a wistfulness in his friend’s reply that Caspian had never heard before. “But no longing can change reality. You are the Countess of Brenn. With our honours come burdens, and we choose to bear them.”

“How you’re changed, my rash, heedless Captain!”

“Perhaps one must change, with changed duties.” His shadow stooped, and Caspian tensed, relaxing only when the play of silhouettes showed Drinian’s mouth to have brushed nothing more intimate than the crown of the lady’s head. “I do feel for your troubles, Anelia.”

“But I chose to accept them?” They watched the movement of her hand rising toward his face, and for an instant Lucy thought she might mean to slap him. _Goodness_ , she thought. _I ought not to have the faintest idea of what they’re talking about. Mother would send me to bed without supper!_

“I wed to content my father,” Anelia continued: quieter now, all bitterness gone. “That he might see me _honourably settled_ before he dies - and his health, you know, was never robust. As to my bridegroom... shall we say only that my _past intrigues_ stood in the way of a better?”

“For which I’m in part to blame.” The arm around her tightened noticeably. The lady laughed.

“My dear, bold sailor! Was I not a reckless Princess, responsible for my own conduct?”

Lucy gathered they had moved apart a little, for a moment later the Countess’s shadow swayed again, merging into his. “You were neither the first nor the last with whom I was so connected.”

“But was I not among the best?”

Her laughter pealed, shaking Caspian from his stricken state. “You speak as one who needs no reassurance,” she purred, and if it were possible for two people to stand closer, the King of Narnia hoped heartily that he would never see it. “I hope this betrothed, for whom you scorn my offers, is worthy of you.”

“The question is more whether I can ever be deserving of Daniela.” The way he said the name tugged hard at Lucy’s heart.

“When do you sail?” She had accepted it now, though with regret plain in her voice. The pleasure in his was no less apparent.

“On the spring tide, tomorrow morning. The King will understand if our going is too early for your attendance.”

“Have you not lectured me on _duty_?” She rounded the fountain, her eyes widening at the sight of the two still, silent figures. “Cousin. Queen Lucy. Forgive me, I should return to the ballroom.”

She flitted by before either of them could gather enough wits to speak. Drinian took one look at their shocked faces and sighed. 

“You have been there some time, Sire,” he stated. Caspian managed to nod.

“We didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” Lucy stammered, uncertain whether she felt more embarrassed for herself or for him. “We came out for some air and – well...”

“I had the same idea: there was no intent on my part, Your Majesties.” Drinian tried a tentative smile. “I’ve been trying to avoid the lady ever since she indicated a desire to _talk_.”

“Plain enough the advances were hers.” His friend looked cautiously relieved, and Caspian was astonished to feel laughter bubbling up in his throat. “Lion Alive, man! A boggy patch you were in when we stumbled out! Our enchanting hostess eager to – ahem! – _renew old acquaintance_ , if I might put it so...”

“Better that way than any other, in the presence of a lady.” Drinian grinned broadly. Lucy giggled.

“Don’t let me get in the way of a man-to-man chat,” she said, halfway to the door before either could react. “And don’t look so _guilty_ , Captain! It seems to me you’ve behaved perfectly honourably - tonight, at least!”

The two Narnians stared after her, faintly embarrassed in each other’s company as neither recalled being before. “I believe I understand now,” said the King slowly, “why Cornelius suddenly ceased to press the case for my Archenlandish cousin as a potential consort for Narnia.”

“He did hint that he was aware of... certain rumours,” Drinian admitted. Caspian delivered a hearty slap to his back.

“Aslan bless you, man!” he cried. “Do you have any idea what a state of terror I was in at the very _prospect_ of being affianced to her? If the connection between her and Our most prominent nobleman preserved Us from such a happening – and brought some amusement to your shore leaves, of course - ‘tis naught to be regretted! Come, we’d best show ourselves to the good folk of Brenn before the festival ends: and tell me, do we sail particularly early tomorrow.”

“First light, Your Majesty,” Drinian assured him, greatly relieved. Caspian nodded, magisterial.

“Excellent! Then we shall make our legitimate excuses and return to the Dawn Treader directly. I daresay my fair cousin will be no less glad than you to evade a more public leave-taking! Edmund! Eustace! Gather yourselves boys, we must be away!

“No, my dear Count, I must insist upon it! My Captain informs me the best tide for so great a ship as ours comes with the dawn and we dare not miss it, lest the men mutiny against further delay in returning to Narnia!”


	13. The Island Of Nightmares

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Another familiar island hoves into sight. To one member of the Dawn Treader’s company at least, it’s far more terrible than Rhoop’s Isle of Dreams…

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this before starting on my imagining of Drinian’s formative years, Once A Lord Of Narnia. A fuller account of his Terebinthian misadventures now appears there.

“Land-ho!”

The hail, Lucy realised, had become routine. On the long voyage east, each hail from the fighting top had meant novelty, excitement and (quite possibly) danger. Even the first few islands on the journey home had the diversion of being barely known. Now, back in familiar waters, it no longer stirred the blood. “Terebinthia,” she stated, quite matter-of-fact.

“Aye.” Something in Drinian’s terse reply made her turn and stare. His hands clenched and his jaw tight, the Captain of the Dawn Treader glared in the direction of the aforementioned island as if it contained something nasty.

“Are you all right, Captain?” she asked.

“Fine, Ma’am. Rhince! We’ll make good use of our halt to restore the rigging, I think. Organise the necessary parties.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n.”

“That’ll be quite a job,” said Edmund, considering the vast lengths of knotted and tarred ropes that climbed in intricate patterns up both sides of the mast. 

“A necessary one, King Edmund.” The subject was therefore closed. Drinian strode off toward the poop, resentment and hostility in every line of him. The children could only gape.

“Well!” whistled Eustace. “What’s bitten _him_?”

“Goodness knows.” She had seen him snapping and impatient: occasionally even flaring into anger. Never, however, had Lucy seen their friend so cold. She didn’t like it.

His bristling displeasure only deepened as the island grew to consume the whole horizon. By the time he stood at the tiller, expertly guiding his great ship between the countless untidy craft that cluttered the overcrowded harbour of Port Terebinthia, Drinian was positively glowering at any unfortunate whose duties happened to take him across the Captain’s line of vision. He brought the galleon alongside the harbour wall with no more than a gentle bump, remaining absolutely still while Caspian gathered his accustomed landing party and bustled them down to the gangplank, already thrown in readiness. 

“Isn’t...” Edmund hinted, jerking his head. Caspian, never diverting his gaze from the cluster of stout, over-jewelled men assembled at the walkway’s landward end, shook his head.

“Later,” he said, from the side of his mouth. “King Tonlock, We are happy to see you!”

“Your Majesty! Accept of me the warmest congratulation of this island and its people on your triumphal return to our waters!”

Lucy wished very much she could have remained on board with Drinian. She didn’t know what it was about the inoffensive, eager little man, but she disliked King Tonlock the moment he opened his weak, big-lipped mouth.

“Your Grace is most kind.” Swiftly, Caspian passed through the round of customary introductions: to Liliandil and the long-lost Lords; to Edmund, Eustace and Lucy herself who (to her disgust) had her hand repeatedly slobbered on in the name of courtesy.

“I trust we shall have the very great honour of entertaining Your Majesties for several days?” suggested Tonlock, before a very clear nudge in the back reminded him of the introductions he was expected to make in turn. “A-hem! If I might present the chief advisers of my government – Master Wenlock and Master Torlow, commissioners respectively of transport and trade, among other burdens too great to elaborate. Aught we might offer to your gallant company...”

“Thank you. We shall convey your generous offer to Our Captain,” said Caspian formally, pinching Eustace hard on the hand when the boy opened his mouth, ready with a well-meaning hail. “But we must beg your forgiveness and remain only very short time in Your Majesty’s dominions. After more than a year and a half at sea, we all are eager to see Narnia again.”

“Quite natural, Sire.” Wenlock was a giant of a man, with lank greying hair falling wildly over a scarred forehead. “Still, we have a feast in readiness at the King’s Mansion for Your Majesties, if you would care to partake of it?”

“He makes it sound like a threat,” muttered Edmund. As Torlow pushed a clear path through the milling throng of quayside idlers, he cast a last longing glance over his shoulder to the Dawn Treader. “But it can’t be – can it?”

*

“You see that great fortress on the bluff, Your Majesties? That’s Black Jack’s Tower.”

Even the shrill voices of the hawkers on the wharf had fallen silent. A brilliant full moon shone down on the harbour as the children, Caspian and Liliandil lolled on the maindeck, where Drinian perched on a great coil of strong rope brought aboard in preparation for the major re-rigging of the ship he had in mind. Lengths of it, already knotted and spliced, lay around the deck at their feet.

“It was named for a damned pirate, if you’ll pardon me the expression, and remains guarded by his kind to this day,” Drinian continued, a hand lifted to stop the protest on Eustace’s lips. “Oh, you’ll see no sign of their ships. They’d receive fair warning of our approach, and their puppet king dare not offend Narnia. But what is the chief support of this benighted island? What it’s been for hundreds of years – pirate loot!”

“Wenlock and Torlow are pirates.” It wasn’t a question. The scars both bore. The gold rings and amulets, so out of place on their brawny, tattooed arms... Edmund was amazed he hadn’t realised it before. “Tonlock’s more or less their tool.”

“Afraid,” Drinian affirmed. “And with good reason. His predecessor – a cousin – was murdered by their _professional acquaintance_ when he dared try to banish them from his dominions. Tonlock knows well enough, a wrong word and his throat will be slit in its turn.”

“Tonlock has ruled – under the watchful eye of his sponsors – these fifteen years or more,” said Caspian, biting his lip as he studied his best friend’s taut features. “And is acknowledged by every other prince as lawful master of Terebinthia. We dare not offend him, or his more formidable friends. Drinian, if I could avoid asking...”

“Then don’t _ask_.” The taller man shot up from his slouch, hands clenched behind his back. “Command it as my master if you must, but for the Lion’s sake never ask it as my friend!”

“I cannot _command!_ ” wailed the King, his voice rising in distress as Drinian began to pace, long strides devouring the deck at its widest point. “We all are invited to this banquet in Narnia’s honour, and were _you_ to be absent the affront would be severe...”

“Command it! Insist I do my duty, for in Aslan’s name I can do as you wish no other way.” The spring that had been coiling inside him since this accursed island first loomed into view snapped free. The words came fast, tumbling over each other, and Drinian, the most disciplined of men, had not the strength to stop them.

“Can you ask me to exchange bows with the villain that led the torturers the first time I set foot on this devilish island? Oh, I knew Master Torlow’s face, even at distance, though he won’t remember mine. I was sixteen, just another captive Archenlandish seaman, when they brought me here. He and his villains were most often drunk, and I knew better than to announce my title to them!

“As to Wenlock: I never saw him, but the name I knew well enough. He was the _admiral_ , if you please, of the _Royal Terebinthian Fleet_. A fine name for a pirate mob gathered in defence of a criminal government! Nay, never ask that I sup with the men who slaughtered my shipmates, King Caspian. ‘Tis too much to seek of anyone in friendship’s name.”

“By Aslan!” The King was ghastly white by the moon’s livid glow. All his ferocious energy drained, Drinian slumped heavily against the mainmast, cradling his head as if it ached. “I – we must leave tonight – directly! I cannot – not for anything – either ask or command such torment of any man, least of all the very best!”

“We’ve half the rigging down, Caspian.” He was too tired to fight: and this challenge, like all the others their grand adventure had thrown into his path, Drinian told himself firmly, he would meet. “We’re in no position to flee, and I shan’t skulk away in the dark like an escaped slave! When is this banquet?”

“Tomorrow.” Even the most dedicated landsman could see the ship was incapable of sailing, and Caspian knew better than to believe the coward’s option would hold any more appeal to his friend than to himself. “If you were to be indisposed...”

“None would credit it,” the taller man reminded him tiredly. “And I shan’t run away.”

“Will somebody _please_ explain what this is all about?” Eustace demanded plaintively, thus recalling the two Narnians to the existence of a frightened audience. Drinian expelled a gusty sigh.

“You know that during my exile I took service with the Royal Fleet of Archenland, the former admiral of which my aunt had married,” he said, lifting his eyes as if he hoped to find the strength for his tale in the stars. “Well: during that time, the kingdom was embroiled in a war against the forces of this island – a pirate rabble, united to defend the base allowed them by a succession of feeble tyrants.”

“By the Kings of Terebinthia,” Caspian put in gently, one sovereign compelled to extend courtesy to another. Drinian spiked him with a glare.

“A Terebinthian crew seized King Nain’s own galleon; slaughtered his crew; then sold its loot openly at market. King Tonlock ignored all appeal for amendment (insofar as could ever be made) and, though our forces were unequal to defence in time of peace, war was declared.

“The pirates banded in defence of their stronghold, and for the first months we were blockaded in our home port, until my ship – the galleon _Tiger_ , under Captain Ram – was ordered to break their blockade and take the fight into open sea. 

“Once we were out and fighting others followed, and we had best of the affray. Then one morning, having been separated from the fleet, we were surprised east of Galma by four of their rabble. 

“We fought as best we could, though the Captain was cut down by an arrow before they could board. Heavily outnumbered, we were overwhelmed and a few of us – the men left uninjured during the fight – were taken prisoner: bound hand and foot and carried off to Black Jack’s Tower to be put to question.”

Lucy whimpered, clutching her brother’s hand. “Oh, Drinian!”

“I was fortunate, Ma’am.” That last glimpse of the _Tiger’s_ shattered deck had returned to him in nightmares down the years, and it had been that agonised ship he had revisited in the darkness at the rescue of Lord Rhoop. “The wounded – more than half the crew, my shipmates and friends of six years – were slaughtered where they lay. I watched the planking turn dark; saw their blood drip between the seams into the sea. It was pure luck I was unharmed, one of five from forty they spared.”

“Don’t!” cried Caspian, Lucy and Liliandil together. Drinian smiled, in a fashion, at their squeamishness.

“I refused to give parole – my pledge not to attempt escape, Eustace,” he added, forestalling the inevitable question. “An Etinsmere gives no promise to pirates! With two of my friends I was chained in a dungeon, to be beaten for our captors’ amusement. Our chains, though, were corroded with age, and Wat managed to break free. One night, when the last guard was deep in drink, we made our escape. 

“How we reached the harbour wall, I’ll never know. Dorix was half-fainting from fever; Wat and I were dizzy with hunger and weak from the beatings, and yet... The luck o’ the Lion, as they say. We stole an open boat, I set course, and the next thing I remember is waking aboard an Archenlandish schooner, being told I was lucky not have been sunk by my own side.

“I was discharged to recover ashore, then sent as a junior officer aboard one of the newest of the King’s galleons: _Retribution_ , one of three sisters - the others being _Revenge_ and _Reprisal_. The war was won inside a twelvemonth, but Your Majesties may easily understand, my opinion of this damnable place was set by my experience of it.”

In daylight, Lucy had thought the craggy tower overlooking the bay rather picturesque. Now, it loomed like a malevolent giant. “You needn’t go to the banquet Drinian, surely,” she said, almost afraid to touch his tightly clenched hand. He sent her a grateful smile.

“You’re kind, Lucy, but you know I must,” he said: and whatever he might say about being a sailor first and foremost it was the aristocrat, the courtier ever conscious of his duty to liege lord and realm, that Edmund saw then. “And I shall! Only – if I’m less than my outspoken self, understand it! When I see Torlow, I’ll be looking for the great iron bar he used to beat his prisoners. Now, it grows late. Your Majesties will sleep aboard?”

“Knowing what we do, we should sooner sleep on Deathwater than under Tonlock’s roof!” Caspian clouted him on the shoulder, expressing through the gesture the thanks Drinian would never want aloud. “Goodnight one and all! If you’re done with your endless leagues of rope, Captain, we might sail on the following morning. Is that acceptable to you?”

“More than acceptable.” He felt, Drinian discovered, oddly better for having spoken. As if the phantoms of his murdered shipmates were returned to their rest by acknowledging them. Small solace when facing their killers across the royal feasting table perhaps: but for the time being, it might suffice.

*

They spent the day of the banquet quietly aboard the Dawn Treader, for having heard Drinian’s story nobody felt much like exploring. The Captain kept himself occupied amongst the men, overseeing the running of the new rig and (in Lucy’s opinion) thoroughly enjoying himself. “I suppose it’s the only way he can stop himself thinking,” she murmured, remembering his wise counsel that long-ago evening on the Dufflepuds’ island. _Don’t think about it until you have to, Ma’am._

“I wish I could help,” said Edmund miserably. “Caspian, isn’t there any way you can get him out of it?”

“I wish there was.” Poor Caspian looked far gloomier in the light of day than his friend. “But – well, it would be a dangerous affront to the Terebinthians, and until the ship is fit for sea we are – more or less – hostages.”

“The Lord Drinian will do his part, Your Majesty. Not for naught is he Tirian’s son,” said Argoz soothingly, trying to cheer his conscience-stricken sovereign. “And who of Terebinthia will dare lift his hand against the King of Narnia’s company? Be of cheer! The evening will pass quicker than this waiting time, and once it’s done I daresay we shall laugh that we ever dreaded the hospitality of these scoundrels!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Author’s note: Drinian’s advice to Queen Lucy was a moment from the BBC’s 1988-ish adaptation that struck me as a perfect character note. I couldn’t resist borrowing it at a moment when the Captain follows it for himself.


	14. What Friends Are For

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Duty and obligation are all very well, but friendship is greater than either.

Lucy’s stomach was in knots as they rode in torchlit procession up through the sprawling town, past shops filled with gold and other finery she knew to have been stolen from innocent ships; beyond the low-roofed homes of the common people; and through wide avenues of grander three-storey buildings that surrounded the palace at the crown of the hill. She watched Edmund and Eustace whispering worriedly to each other; sensed the tension in Liliandil’s fingers as she clutched the reins of her stolid cob close by. Caspian and Drinian, usually the leaders in any conversation, had not spoken a word since leaving the ship.

Great shadows loomed before the wide-open doors of Tonlock’s palace. The fat little monarch, swamped by his jewel-encrusted gold robe, lifted both pudgy arms in a gesture of welcome while behind and around him a dozen giants wearing shaggy beards and golden amulets, chains and rings, rumbled a menacing chorus of greeting. As grooms swarmed around to secure their mounts and the Narnian part formed up behind their King, Lucy felt a frightened, angry sob work its way up in her throat.

“It’s all right, Ma’am,” said a low voice close to her ear. “Soon be over now.”

She nodded, ashamed. It ought to be she, a Queen of Narnia, offering support: not he, the person most affected by the obscene horror of it all!

“Your Majesties all – gracious lady! My Lords of Narnia, bid you humbly welcome to this my modest home!” cried Tonlock expansively. Eustace wrinkled his nose.

“Beast!” he opined. But he said it under his breath, and no one heard to reproach him.

“Allow that I present these gentlemen, the government of this island, without whom I should be at an utter loss!”

It took all of Caspian’s considerable strength of character to endure the bows and smiles of a queue of infamous pirates. He knew if he dared to glance at Drinian his regal composure must falter, so he started straight ahead, making the appropriate responses by rote and silently pleading for Aslan’s strength to carry him to the ordeal’s end. 

Wenlock, the mad genius behind the Terebinthian _Royal Fleet_ ; Torlow, constable of the fortress and torturer-in-chief; Munlow, presented incongruously as the Royal Chamberlain; and the Captain of the King’s Guard, a big, raw-boned fellow with a black patch where his left eye ought to be. “Our most faithful protector, Master Turlock,” Tonlock declared.

“Your Majesty.” Turlock bent stiffly over Caspian’s outstretched hand. What impulse possessed him the King would never know, but before the fleshy lips could touch it he had pulled the limb away.

“Sir,” he said, covering his confusion (and the startled silence that had fallen) with a carefully-pinned smile. “We are most grateful, my Lord King, for your generous hospitality, and we regret that we can savour it no longer. Our ship must sail on the dawn tide tomorrow.”

“So soon, Your Majesty!” cried Munlow, clasping his hands in a faintly womanish gesture of dismay at odds with his deep voice and gigantic size. “Why! When I passed your ship this morning she stood naked around the mainmast: without rigging; without...”

“Our company is exceedingly efficient, Master Munlow, and the knowledge of home’s nearness encourages their labours.” So, they had been observing the work aboard. Caspian shot a worried look toward his friend, certain Drinian would have picked up on the hint as quickly as himself.

Drinian had not heard a word spoken since the one-eyed man had been presented. He stood as if turned to stone, his narrowed stare positively piercing the startled villain. “Does it not, my Lord?” Caspian prompted, resting a fingertip on the Captain’s arm. 

“Eh? Aye, yes, quite so, Your Majesty.”

“He knows that fellow too,” Eustace muttered. The Lord Revelian nodded.

“And their acquaintance was not pleasant,” he agreed softly. “Not that any man’s ever could be with so palpable a villain!”

The royal councillors, it seemed to Caspian, were suddenly very anxious to foreshorten the formalities and establish their guests at enormous trestle tables along the length of the Great Hall. In accustomed fashion each Narnian would be flanked by two of his (or her) hosts, and Lucy discovered to her alarm that she would be sitting between Munlow and Wenlock, neither of whom might be expected to have much to discuss with a young girl from another world. 

Edmund, the nearest of her own party, was facing Wenlock, with Munlow’s wife and another rough-looking fellow (whose name she had not heard) on either side. She ate her soup in nervous silence, painfully aware there must be several more courses to come, even before the necessary speeches of empty goodwill could begin.

It was no comfort to know every other Narnian was feeling the same acute unease: or that some of the Terebinthians too were distinctly nervous in the company of their strange, unwanted guests.

“The food, I trust, is to Your Majesty’s liking?” rumbled Wenlock, his breath damp against her ear. Lucy almost jumped out of her chair.

“Oh! Yes, thank you, it’s very nice,” she babbled, although the sauce that smothered the oily fish on her plate was far from her taste. The big pirate nodded sagely.

“There are many say our Terebinthian cooking’s an _acquired_ taste,” he told her. Lucy, delicately dabbing her mouth (and spitting out a small bone in the process) managed a watery smile.

“You use a lot more spices than we do in Narnia,” she volunteered, too brightly. Edmund caught her eye and grimaced before returning to his own equally strained conversation.

Even the plentiful quantities of wine, ale and mead offered with the food had no effect that Edmund could detect on the atmosphere around King Tonlock’s table. Neither, he supposed, did the fact that half the goblets in which the drinks were served had as decoration (roughly scratched over) the Royal Arms of Archenland.

He couldn’t help feeling he was tasting the blood of the pirate councillors’ victims in every sip of sugared mead.

Still, he had to drink at least a little of the sweet concoction to counter the vibrancy of the spices which smeared every piece of meat and fish offered. And the more time he spent with a cup or a spoon to his mouth, the less he was required to spend in stilted conversation with his neighbours.

Lord, he hated this island!

From the place of honour beside their host, Caspian watched the tense faces of his countrymen with increasing concern. Drinian was calm – too calm! – his low voice controlled as he responded to the occasional clumsy flirtation from the over-rouged and goggling councillor’s wife at his right hand, keeping himself turned carefully toward her and away from the one-eyed stranger whose appearance had initially disconcerted him. All the hostility he kept squeezed from his tone was apparent, to one who knew him well, in his posture. Rigid, tense, he held himself more like a man expecting a traitor’s assault than the honoured guest at a ruling sovereign’s table.

And so the torment continued, through soup, fish and meat; and then more meat. Until they thought it might never end. Until the sharp sound of racing feet in the corridors and voices raised shrill in agitation penetrated the thick walls and the haze of candle smoke. 

The carved double doors burst inward with a crash and a blast of chilly air that made lantern flames sway and thinly-gowned ladies shiver. “Milord! ‘Ere’s a man o’ the Dawn Treader beggin’ speech with the Lord Drinian!”

“Rynelf!” The gentleman in question was halfway out of his seat before the announcement could be made.

“This fellow brings ill news if I read his face aright,” growled Wenlock, all false concern.

“Your Majesties – noble gentlemen – ladies all.” He was babbling, and Rynelf never babbled. That was Rhince’s job, or so Drinian had been heard to tease his deputy. “Sir! I’m sent by Rhince to beg you, return to the ship at once! The Mate’s at a loss...”

“The new rig?” Drinian demanded, pushing back his chair before good manners could reassert themselves, even against his will. “Your Majesty – Sire...”

“Of course you must return to your ship directly, my dear Captain, if your sturdy deputy is in such despair!” squeaked Tonlock, high-pitched as nails down a chalkboard over the deeper, more ominous rumblings of his countrymen. Caspian nodded, biting down hard into his bottom lip.

“Send to Us immediately my Lord, if there should be need,” he commanded, rising with Tonlock as Drinian strode the length of the chamber, pausing to offer the briefest of bows to be divided between the nobilities present. “Aslan! I hope this crisis can be swiftly resolved,” he added, low-voiced.

“So do I.” Rhince was so capable; so sure of himself. For his authority to be insufficient meant real trouble, and that might in turn mean a longer stay on this hateful island than they had already endured. Lucy’s throat tightened. Her eyes began to sting. _I won’t cry_ , she told herself fiercely. _I’m a Queen of Narnia and they don’t howl when things go wrong!_

Though the stilted conversations had been difficult, the heavy silence that followed the clang of the doors in Drinian’s wake was even harder to bear. “Couldn’t we all have gone?” Eustace whispered. The Lord Mavramorn shook his shaggy head.

“Landsfolk aboard would cause only further havoc, young master,” he said with the absolute confidence (Caspian thought) of an abominable lubber who had more than once made a nuisance of himself to the professionals of his crew. “Though I confess, any escape from this present torment would be welcome enough! Ah, yes, more wine, thank you, young man! I have perfect confidence that our Captain will see matters set right! Your Majesty?”

“Hm? Oh, yes, of course.” Very deliberately Caspian relaxed the death-grip he had been holding on a goblet’s delicate stem. Facing him, Liliandil offered a soothing smile.

“I have not the smallest doubt all will be well,” she said, so serene that Edmund gave her a very narrow stare.

She met his eyes steadily, with just the faintest turning up at one corner of her mouth. _Could she…?_ he wondered. 

It was hardly the time, but Edmund was determined that before the night’s end he would know why she, who understood less about sailing ships than any of them, should be able to respond with such terrible, sanguine certainty!

*

His head felt heavy; his stomach queasy. Too much of that horrid sugary mead, Eustace concluded groggily, clinging extra-tightly to the reins of his rotund little cob as it ambled after Lucy’s at the heart of a noisy torchlit procession moving from the castle down to the quay. Drummers and buglers led the way, disturbing the honest citizens of Terebinthia (if there were any, which by all accounts was unlikely) with the news that Narnia’s King returned to his ship.

The Dawn Treader, though he knew his vision might be a touch hazy, looked well enough: the intricate spiders-web of rope climbed in its familiar complicated pattern up both sides of the mast and around the great furled sail. There was no sign on deck of the frenzied activity he had learned to associate with a crisis; no shouted orders or curses reached their ears on the still night air. “Dunno what we were worried ‘bout,” he mumbled, wondering why his tongue suddenly felt too big for his mouth.

The musicians, then the torch-bearers, peeled away, leaving only the running grooms to step forth and reclaim Terebinthia’s horses once the Narnians dismounted to clamber along the gangplank left lowered in expectation of their return. “Your Majesties!”

“My Lord Drinian.” Caspian matched the Captain’s elegant bow with his own. “All well?” he added more quietly.

“Aye.” The stern set of the taller man’s features relaxed. He leaned forward, taking advantage of the shadows cast by a loitering cluster of long-lost Lords to shield his action from prying eyes. “And _thank you_ , Caspian,” he added, low and fervent.

“If I could only have done more, my friend,” the King murmured, wringing his oldest ally’s hand as the children gaped. “But I told them on _no_ account to reveal my part in the business!”

“Rhince and Rynelf told me naught Sire, but they’re paltry liars,” Drinian assured him cheerfully, ushering the whole group aft and through the poop hatch toward the Great Cabin. “Their assurances that all those _troubles with the new rig_ were mysteriously resolved were not entirely convincing. As to the rest... well, that I guessed myself.”

“I could hardly leave you suffering such torment, Drinian,” said Caspian, much touched. Liliandil shook her head, bringing the great silk curtain of sunny hair forward around her face.

“And I never suspected for a second!” she marvelled. “My lord, it appears, is more devious than I believed!”

“Did you really not guess?” Edmund felt guilty for doubting, but her composure with everyone else apparently horror-stricken had been really astonishing. “I rather thought – you weren’t at all alarmed when Rynelf came charging in... it rather occurred to me that you might know something.”

“Honestly, Ed!” exclaimed Lucy. The Star’s Daughter raised her outstretched hands. 

“Ignorance is a fair refuge, King Edmund,” she said simply as Caspian moved behind to unclasp the dark green cloak hanging from her slim shoulders. “Knowing naught of sailing ships, I simply assumed that whatever the crisis might be, our Captain would quickly be its master.”

“Your confidence is gratefully received, Ma’am,” replied that Captain drily. Everyone laughed.

“Who was that other fellow, Drinian?” Edmund wanted to know. “The one with the eye-patch, I mean. You knew him immediately didn’t you?”

“Hardly a face a man could forget, King Edmund - especially when first seen under those circumstances.” He had known, Drinian acknowledged, that his shocked recognition must have been obvious, to his own party at least. “The name I never heard but the face... aye, that I saw, aboard the galleon _Tiger_ east of Galma. The _Captain of the Royal Guard_ gave the orders that slit the throats and split the bellies of twenty-five honest men before we few captives were thrown into boats for the journey to Black Jack’s Tower. There was no patch on the eye then – just the empty socket – and the face was a touch less scarred. But it was he.”

Nobody dared question the certainty of the identification. Stunned, they could only stare at the speaker, trying (and failing) to imagine the onslaught of bloody memory Drinian had endured on the palace steps. “Can you forgive me, that I ever demanded such a thing of you” Caspian whispered, swaying so fearfully Lucy thought he might faint.

“You _demanded_ nothing; and by Master Turlock’s presence I was prevented from remembering too much of Torlow’s rough handling.” No point allowing his good sovereign to wallow in needless guilt! “And it was your kindness gave me means of escape. Oh, I’ll do well enough Caspian, don’t fret for me. Just let us be away from this pestilential island, and I shall be myself again.”

“Tomorrow,” the King pledged earnestly, clasping his oldest associate’s hands. “Great Lion! What horrors have you been compelled to relive, and all in the name of Narnia!”

“For which alone they can be borne.” There would be nightmares again tonight. Drinian was resigned to that. But soon there would be Galma, then the green, gentle coast of Narnia and the comfort of home. “Merely the sight o’ that prison would have revived all the ghosts, Caspian. I was prepared for that.”

“Let’s leave the ladies to their rest. Boys, you’ve no need to remain yawning, go to your hammocks; I’ll do my best not to disturb you later. Drinian – share a cup of ale with me before retiring.”

To his (and the children’s) great relief, the dark-haired sailor softened into a genuine smile. “I’ll find the flagon, Caspian. Make yourself comfortable in the cabin,” he instructed. “Goodnight, one and all. We’ll be sailing with the dawn tide. There’s no cause for you to rise unless you’d care to watch this miserable chunk o’ rock subsiding over the horizon!”

“I think I should, actually,” said Lucy seriously. “Well done, Caspian,” she added softly as that gentleman turned, slowly, to follow the others from the ladies’ cabin.

“What else was I to do?” enquired the young King, perplexed. “After all, what _are_ friends for?”


	15. News Of Home

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They’ve been waiting months for it. Now they have it. Not everyone is quite as prepared as might be expected…

“I cannot see the Duke.” The words leaked from the side of Caspian’s mouth even as he raised a hand in answer to the echo of cheers from the crowded quay. “Can he have galleons of this grandeur approaching from the east so often?”

“I fancy he has… despatched a representative, Sire.” Formality was Drinian’s refuge when impertinent laughter came too near. Following the line of his friend’s gaze, the King emitted a heartfelt groan.

“Hang it! Of course he _would_ send _her!_ ”

“Who?” asked Eustace. Lucy rolled her eyes.

“You mean _whom_ , don’t you?” she chided.

“I know exactly what I mean! Who’s he sent?”

“His daughter.” Edmund understood, and he grinned hugely. “Golly! She won’t be pleased to see you, Liliandil!”

“Perhaps I ought to stay aboard.” The Star’s Daughter edged behind Drinian. “It would hardly be polite to distress our hosts…”

“Even ruder for the next Queen of Narnia to skulk aboard in an allied port,” Edmund countered. The others nodded.

“Galma dare not offend Narnia, Ma’am,” Drinian told her. Liliandil straightened her shoulders.

“If it must be so, my Lord, I shall endure it. Is _that_ the lady they hoped you might choose, Caspian?”

“She’s not exactly _ugly_ ,” said Lucy.

“No oil painting, either,” muttered Eustace, trailing reluctantly after the others toward the lowering gangplank.

“Your Majesty! Words cannot express the joy of all Galmians in witnessing this triumphal return!”

“You are too kind, my Lady Malena.” The hand the speaker extended beneath the bell-shaped hem of a flowing sleeve, was small, dainty and smothered in deep, coppery freckles. “As you see, we bring a larger party westward than halted here in preparation for our voyage east.”

“Any companion of Your most excellent Majesty is assured the hospitality of our island, Sire.” Her left eye was skewed, its marked cast making it seem she stared directly over his shoulder into the face of the stooped and shaggy Rhoop. “I trust you will accompany me directly to the castle? My father will be honoured above all things to have you as our guest!”

“Your Ladyship is most kind.” Plaguey formality commanded him say the right thing, whether Caspian felt it or not. “Our stay must of necessity be short, with every man of us yearning for a glimpse of our own shores, but if it can be achieved without inconvenience to Duke Rairton, we should be honoured to bide a night here. My Lord Drinian, our valiant Captain, is of course known to you...”

“And dearly welcomed, Sir.” The fine hand was imperiously extended. Bending the knee (but not brushing it into the dirt as a lesser man might, being first nobleman of Narnia) Drinian kissed it.

“Your Ladyship is too kind. I trust we find you in health, Madam?”

“I thank you, yes. If there be any way in which our people can be of assistance to your crew, Captain, I beseech you make it know, and it shall be done.”

Drinian tilted his dark head, considering the question. “We’ve no pressing needs, Ma’am; save perhaps the purchase of some gold leaf for the prow,” he decided. “It ought to be gleaming as it did the day we sailed for His Majesty’s return to Narnia.”

“It shall be attended; not as a sale, but as a gift from this island. Nay, Sire, I shall insist upon it, and so shall my father. Will _all_ your party here follow us to the castle?”

“With Your Ladyship’s approval,” Caspian affirmed. “Madam, when last we met you were so kind as to wish Us well in Our search. I trust you will rejoice with Us in the return of these four gentlemen: Lords Argoz, Mavramorn, Revelian and Rhoop, those friends of the King my late honoured father...”

Dark green eyes widened, only emphasising their unfortunate cast. “Indeed Sirs, I do rejoice as I welcome you back to the island where your own quest first began!” the lady exclaimed, clapping her hands. “But - of the crew you gathered here...”

“No trace could be found, Madam,” Caspian conceded quietly. “I am truly sorry.”

“That even four who departed that day aboard the _Maid of Galamaia_ should be discovered well is more than any that saw her go would ever have dared hope, Sire.” All other introductions, she seemed willing to leave for another time. Caspian would not allow it

“Also, it is Our privilege to present these, Our fabled predecessors on the Throne of Narnia: Queen Lucy and her brother King Edmund of ancient times, together with their noble kinsman here, Master Eustace.”

“Your Majesties.” Malena’s turn to bend the knee, with just the faintest touch of awe. “You there! Fetch more horses from Master Jarik’s stables! Their Ancient Majesties and their kinsman must go nobly mounted to the Ducal Palace!”

She turned on her heel then, dismissing Liliandil without a word. A servant, no doubt, of the ancient Queen, discreetly position with head bowed a step behind her mistress. Had Caspian, reading her thoughts with scalding clarity, not cleared his throat, she would assuredly never have turned back.

“Your Ladyship is hospitable, but I must request a gentle mount for this lady, who of all our party is least accustomed to the saddle. Allow that I make known to you she who has made me the most blessed of men: the Lady Liliandil, daughter to the Stars and the Eastern Sea, who sails with us as my betrothed bride and Narnia’s future Queen.”

Malena’s reaction was one of those odd things seen by several people in different ways. Lucy maintained that her plump, pinkish cheeks went so horribly pale that the heavy pattern of freckles spattering them became positively garish; Eustace that she rocked back so far onto her heels she needed lead toes to her slippers to bring her upright. Drinian said (very fairly) that her whole face froze for a moment before she remembered her manners (and her audience). And they all agreed with Edmund when he declared that she delivered one particularly scorching look; and that its victim, if a glare could reduce a person to ash, would not have been the lady more fortunate than herself, but the gentleman who made her so.

“The Lady Liliandil will ride my own jennet, Sire. Indeed Madam, I insist upon it!” she cried. “Now, we must make haste! My father is wild to hear of Your Majesty’s adventures, and he holds letters entrusted to him in the name of my Lord Regent Trumpkin, to be placed in no other hand but yours. Sound the trumpets! Make way for the King of Narnia, Their Ancient Majesties, my Lords of the realm and my Lady the King’s bride! Make way, I say!”

They considered themselves fortunate the formalities on arriving at the Ducal Palace were cut short. Presented with breathing evidence of his ambitions’ failures, Duke Rairton showed neither malice nor any desire to detain the Narnian party for more than a night. “Your Majesty’s most faithful servant Trumpkin sent these letters, Sire, to be placed into your hands by none but myself,” he declaimed, bowing low as he performed his errand. Caspian beamed.

“Letters to all the crew!” he exclaimed, turning each individual missive from one hand to the other and back. “How considerate of our excellent Regent to have dispatched such a packet! My Lord Drinian, you’ll send these back to the ship immediately?”

“Gladly, Sire,” Drinian replied promptly. “Is there answer from that scatter-brained _Dwarf_ to Your Majesty’s letter from Narrowhaven too?”

“Indeed, which We shall consider the instant we have our shipmates’ communications dispatched. Ah!”

The slyness that filled Caspian’s look alarmed Edmund and Lucy alike, if for different reasons: he because he caught a sudden resemblance to the usurper Miraz in the rightful King’s face; she because she simply hated to see anyone being teased. “This, perhaps, we had best hold back,” the King said airily, wafting one particular paper addressed in a fine, ladylike hand. Drinian cleared his throat.

“As Your Majesty pleases,” he said stiffly. Caspian sighed.

“I apologise,” he said, proffering the object to support the word with an appropriate deep. “It _is_ her hand, of course?”

“It is.” Blandly, Drinian tucked the paper inside his jerkin. Caspian looked disappointed.

“I might have thought you wild with impatience to read it, my Lord,” he whined.

“Caspian, don’t _pry!_ ” Lucy exclaimed. Drinian flashed her a grateful smile.

“I’ll have these sent down to the ship at once Sire, if my Lord Duke will be so kind as to spare a man for the errand,” he hinted. 

Rairton nodded. “With the greatest of pleasure: and we’ll have another man show Your Majesty’s party to the finest suites of chambers our poor palace can boast! If Your Graces would have peace and privacy until supper – which we beg you take at our table - it shall be granted.”

“You are most kind, my Lord.” The Duke was regarding Liliandil covertly, the question plain in his rheumy eyes. _What has this stranger that my Malena lacks?_

Any man of the Dawn Treader’s company might have answered, Caspian knew: for his choice of consort had the unanimous approval of every subject to meet her, which the Lady of Galamaia could never have earned so freely. Still, to see her compelled to bear such sceptical scrutiny displeased him. “If your gentleman would be so kind as to lead the way...” he suggested. The whey-faced, lounging usher at the door sprang to immediate attention.

“The New Annexe, my Lord?” he whinnied. Rairton nodded.

“At once. And I trust, Sire, the intelligence you receive from the estimable Trumpkin will be entirely pleasing! Until we dine, Your Graces all.” Biting his lip (although perhaps only Lucy saw him do it) he left them gladly to his servants’ care.

*

“What does Trumpkin say?” she demanded the moment the usher Tudoc had retreated into the narrow passageway which cut the New Annexe off from the Old Castle. Edmund darted past her, sliding the door open and thrusting out a twitching nose.

“All clear,” he reported, closing the door again. “Sorry. One can’t be too careful with foreign courts! Rairton might be civil enough but he’s not going to be friendly after the shock you just sprang on him, Caspian.”

The King shrugged as he dug a thumbnail into Narnia’s Lion seal, scattering shards of red wax across the carpet. He scanned the first few sentences, a smile breaking out at the sight of the familiar heavy, rounded scrawl.

“First, we may be easy. Calormen has not stirred in our absence.”

Drinian puffed out his sun-browned cheeks. “Weak Tisrocs and a run o’ bad harvests be praised!” he exclaimed.

“Quite.” Caspian arched a golden brow. “Further: news of our being safely returned to _familiar waters_ has caused celebration across the kingdom. Even Cornelius forgot his aching joints – ‘tis the curse, Trumpkin maintains, of the half-blood Dwarf – so far as to _lumber_ with Trufflehunter in our honour at the Dancing Lawn. The realm, in short, is peaceful and prospering. A tribute, no doubt, to the shrewd management of My Highness’s most devoted Regent.”

“Sounds like a pitch for your job, Caspian!”

Instantly Edmund regretted his thoughtless joke. Caspian’s mobile features froze and Drinian’s dark eyes shuttered, turning hard as unpolished jet. 

“He says also,” the King continued, wooden, “that our Royal uncle King Nain has sickened in recent week. By the time of our reading this, he may even be dead. Imagine it, Drinian! Corin Cracked-Pate may be King of Archenland!”

“Caspian, don’t be horrid!”

“You have not the dubious honour of acquaintance with my cousin, Lucy!” Briefly all introspection fled from two handsome Narnian faces.

“I pity my Lords of Anvard,” Drinian murmured. “Old King Nain was a fine man, mind. None could have been kinder to an orphaned exile than he. Should he be gone, ‘tis to be regretted on more than one account.”

“Anelia will be greatly distressed.”

“Aye.”

Another uncertain pause! Eustace had expected them to be madly excited, chattering faster than a pair of irate Mice at the mere thought of news from home. Drinian touched the right side of his chest, making the paper inside his jerkin crackle. At the slight sound, his fingers twitched away.

“The Giants of the Wild Lands paid their tribute in full on the appointed date,” Caspian reported, paraphrasing the rambling announcements of his Regent. “Trumpkin considers that the appearance of a Narnian army in full array on the edge of their territories expedited matters remarkably. Drinian, for the Lion’s sake _read_ her letter, man, and cease this incessant _fiddling_ with it!”

He snatched his hand away as if his jacket was on fire. “If Your Majesties will excuse me,” he said tightly, making a lunge for the door. Caspian buried his head in both hands.

Nothing he did could cut out the accusatory stares of the two ladies. “I know!” he groaned, his contrition dissipating at least a little of Lucy’s dismay. “I ought not to stamp on so sensitive a corn, but hang it! One would expect a man lost in love (and Drinian, for all his brusque manner, is assuredly that!) would be avid for the first words from his beloved in more than a twelvemonth! What is he thinking of?”

“He didn’t look avid to me,” said Eustace. “He seemed perfectly calm until he touched the letter. Then he got a – a...”

“A worried look around the eyes,” Edmund concluded. The Star’s Daughter clapped a hand across her mouth.

“Do you not recall his words to us, that night on Coriakin’s island?” she demanded, the words seeping between her long fingers. “When Your Majesty spoke of Narnia, and the lady awaiting our bold Captain’s return? He said...”

“That he would yearn for a glimpse of her, until the time came to discover if she had not forsaken him for some _damnable confounded lubber_ ,” Caspian recited, all his healthy colour drained away. “No! The Lady of Glasswater is as faithful as a Badger and as devoted as – as ever a sweetheart was to her sailor! I _cannot_ believe she might abandon him!”

“Drinian may not be so sure, now the test approaches.”

“Then Drinian is as great a fool as the Rabbit-Man of the Lantern Waste! Nay, you shall see! Five minutes from now he’ll burst into the room, large as life and thrice as boisterous, telling us his Daniela is the truest and best lady that ever breathed, just see if he doesn’t!”

Five minutes passed; ten; fifteen. To Lucy it felt as if she had been staring at the same door, memorising the grain of the wood and the peel of the paint, for longer than she had sailed east aboard the Dawn Treader. Drinian had not returned, boisterous or otherwise, and even Caspian’s best efforts at sustaining conversation had begun to flag.

Trumpkin’s letter had been passed about and discarded. Dusk closed around the unplanned sprawl of the Ducal Palace, and from the windows of their hilltop residence they watched lanterns begin to flicker and flare as the residents of Galamaia lit candles at their windows. 

“This is awful!” Eustace burst out, always the first to succumb to impatience. “Don’t you hate not _knowing?_ ”

“P’raps we ought to go looking for him?”

“No, Ed!” Lucy’s cry forestalled their scrambling. “Drinian would hate us digging him out to pry!”

“I shall go.” Caspian was guiltily aware of having provoked the crisis. Liliandil nodded.

“If our friend will confide in any, it will be you,” she agreed. 

Feeling more like a man about to enter a dragon’s lair than to seek out his oldest friend, Caspian squared his shoulders, stuck out his chin and reached for the door handle. “Yes,” he said, before his resolution could fail him. “I shall go.”

He tried as he left them to imagine where Drinian might have gone. He might be about the Ducal residence; or wandering the town. But most likely, if he were truly troubled, he would be where he felt himself most secure. Aboard his beloved Dawn Treader.

The first option always seemed the least likely, an opinion affirmed by a few short questions to a pair of malingering ushers. The Captain of the King’s ship was not within the palace.

“Your Majesty!” And Edmund’s caution was justified in the worst possible way by the appearance, hands wringing, of the Ducal daughter. “What is this we hear? The Lord Drinian is _missing?_ What may we do to assist you?”

“I doubt my friend is missing as such, my dear Madam,” he said placatingly, before half Galamaia could be set to searching. “Indeed, I daresay I know precisely where he might be found! If Your Ladyship would be so kind as to provide me with a good mount and – perhaps – an unobtrusive escort, I shall have him restored to the palace within the hour.”

“But – but most gracious Sire...”

“Our sailor will be returned to his ship, my Lady,” he assured her, infuriatingly bland. “With a good horse beneath me...”

He discovered there and then that a pout on an unloved face is a singularly unappealing thing. “Still, surely there’s no cause for Your Majesty to go in person!” she cried. “Allow that a man of this household carries your summons…”

“I believe it best to go myself, my Lady Malena.” Though his jaw cracked painfully, Caspian maintained a smile. “It is not, perhaps, the _wisest_ thing to allow a stern sailor such as my Captain to gather a sovereign’s garments for supper at a valued ally’s court…”

“Oh! Oh, but in that case, of course...” The Daughter of Galma clapped her speckled hands, troubled frown dissolving into a really (he was too fair not to conceded it) charming smile. “Although the Lord Drinian does become those hardy mariners’ clothes very _well_...”

“We should not wish to don their like Ourself on such an occasion,” Caspian finished solemnly. Malena gurgled. 

“Should we not saddle _two_ horses, Sire?” she suggested. “The Lord Drinian could be returned the sooner...”

“If it be not too grievous an imposition upon Your Ladyship’s excellent grooms.” Drinian would undoubtedly prefer to walk, but if he was determined to inconvenience his friends by vanishing, Caspian told himself decisively, he must abide by the inevitable consequence!

*

Ten minutes (and a sore throat from repeating that no, he really didn’t require a full royal escort) later, Caspian clattered out of the residence in the company of a single archer, a spare mount trotting behind him on a long leading rein as he entered Galamaia’s market eve with all its clamour and confusion. Down via Fisherman’s Quay, his nose wrinkled against the stench of a fresh catch, and on past taverns, warehouses and whore-houses to the wharf where the Dawn Treader bobbed, a bright, exotic bird on the murky port waters.

Rhince strode down the gangway to greet his sovereign at the landward end, wiping big paint-smeared hands against his smock. “You’ve come for the Cap’n, Your Majesty,” he stated, and the instant surge of relief he felt in being proven right dissolved from Caspian’s belly under the sailor’s troubled stare. “We was gettin’ a mite worried, Sire, ‘til Ryenlf spied you comin’! Cap’n climbed aboard an hour ago, scowlin’ and givin’ orders that he’s not to be disturbed. Disappeared into the cabin, and we ain’t seen ‘im since. Shall I run on and announce you, Sire?”

“Nay, Rhince.” They climbed the sloping gangplank together, the slight, spruce monarch overshadowed by his burly companion. “If any man is to be roared at for disobedience to orders, grant that it be me!”

“Glad enough to, Your Majesty.”

There was a whisper of exasperation not quite drowned by fond concern in the immediate reply. Caspian raced up the poop ladder with a nod to the man on watch and passed through the open hatch into the quiet interior. He paused for a moment, his back to the door of his own Great Cabin, staring at the remaining barrier between Drinian and himself. Then, more afraid than he could remember being since Rhoop’s half-inhuman scream had revealed the truth of the Dark Island, he lifted a hand and knocked.

“What in the name of – oh!” Drinian cut himself off mid-rant, thereby confirming all Caspian’s private suspicions about his acting skills. “What brings Your Majesty aboard?”

“Not Majesty, but Caspian.” The other man was composed, which lightened his fears somewhat. “I am sorry, Drinian. My teasing was ill-conceived - and clumsy!”

“And my response its equal.” Drinian seized the proffered hand and dragged its owner into his modest cabin. His teeth flashed, brilliantly white in the shadowy half-light that crept in through the galleon’s sternports. “She waits for me, Caspian! All these months without word and still she _waits!_ Can you conceive of it?”

“Of course she waits!” His own doubts conveniently forgotten, Caspian allowed himself to be swung like an oversized rag doll around the confined space. “My Lady of Glasswater is as constant as the ocean, and she adores you! Shame on you, my Lord, for ever doubting – though until this day I never guessed you did.”

“Though it was I first raised the prospect, neither did I until I saw her letter.” Giddy, Drinian allowed himself to slouch back against the outer bulwark. “I _cannot_ be worthy of such a woman, Caspian! Do you ever think so of your Liliandil?”

“Daily.” Unconsciously the eyes of both men were drawn to the two pages spread on Drinian’s plain writing table, closely covered in a light and delicate had. “I hope our wives will be friends, Drinian! Can you imagine the horror, should they detest each other from first sight?”

“I’d think that less than likely.” He could be optimistic about anything, Drinian discovered, now he knew his sweetheart would be waiting when the Dawn Treader dropped anchor at Cair Paravel. “How could two friends such as we love women that couldn’t bear each other? Can we not depart for Narnia this instant?”

“By the Lion, would that we could!” Laughing, Caspian threw an arm around his exultant friend. “But Duke Rairton has borne with much from me today. Fleeing from his supper table would be an insult too many. Now, I shall gather my finery: and I expect _you_ , my Lord Captain, to do the same. Daniela expects to see her dashing courtier as much as her venturesome sailor returned to Etinsmere, and hurry! The _daughter_ has word of your escaping. We dare not linger ‘til she sends half the occupants of that infernally ugly _residence_ in pursuit of us both!”


	16. The Last Night

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The long voyage is almost over, and Captain Drinian has a few things to say to his crew. They may have a surprise of their own in store…

“Your Majesty.”

“Aslan’s Mane what _formality_ , Captain!” cried the Star’s Daughter. His raven head sticking up to the fo’c’sle from the maindeck ladder, Drinian flashed an unrepentant smile.

“With your permission Sire, I should like to gather all hands,” he added, with equal solemnity. Caspian, his forehead creased, nodded.

“Of course, if you wish to address them,” he said, puzzled. Drinian vaulted up the last steps to join them and spun, both hands already cupped around his mouth.

“Rhince!” he bawled aft to the man on watch. “Muster all hands!”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n! All ‘ands to the maindeck! Shift along, you lazy lubbers! All ‘ands to the maindeck!”

Lanterns were lit. Torches flared from every sconce along the sides, casting the fo’c’sle into pulsing shadow as the men milled together around the foot of the mast, upturned faces showing clearly for a moment before subsiding back into gloom. The galleon’s passengers clustered together at the starboard rail, keeping close as much for reassurance as warmth on a chill spring night. “What’s he up to?” whispered Edmund. Caspian’s shoulders lifted.

“He said naught of this to me,” he said, quite put out. Under the cover of the dark and her long sleeve, Liliandil reached for his hand.

Drinian’s thoughtful gaze shifted across his quiet company, as if to memorise first one face, then the next. “Well, men,” he said at length, conversational. Calm, Lucy thought, like the weary survivor of a long and arduous war. _Or a mariner with the scent of home after a long voyage_ , she amended silently. “Tomorrow, we drop anchor in our home port.”

The crew raised a lusty cheer. Drinian lifted a hand, and they fell instantly silent.

“With our great voyage ended, your commissions will lapse. Some of you, I hope, may choose to remain in the service of our Fleet. That others may have had enough of the sea can only be understood. As this will be my last night as your Captain...”

“We’m goin’ nowhere, Sir!” shouted a voice from somewhere in the dark mass. Edmund rather thought it was Erlick. The rumbling murmur – assent or disagreement? – that followed seemed to resonate in the very timbers of the hull itself.

“Make no pledge until you have your land-legs regained,” Drinian advised, and though he was younger than them all, there was something paternal in the way he regarded them. Rhince coughed, feigning embarrassment.

“Beggin’ your pardon Cap’n, but does that stand for you too?”

“Some of us have no choice to make,” Drinian allowed cheerfully. “Any man of you who – after proper consideration – expresses a wish to remain will be welcome: and that’s a statement I hardly thought to hear myself make after our lady Dawn Treader’s maiden voyage.”

Some of the men groaned. Others covered their faces in mock dismay. Rhince’s hearty bellow overlaid all other sound. “Thought they was going to put us on the Thirty League Rocks, I did!” he howled.

“A fear I shared, though discipline prevented me from expressing it as _colourfully_ as you.” Not more than half a dozen of the crew, Lucy recalled, had ever been beyond sight of their own shores when the royal galleon set out on her first sea trials. “And I’ll confess: in my first report to His Majesty after, I advised that any venture into unknown seas be delayed until I had at least half a dozen men able to read a chart o’ their own coasts correctly.”

Somebody sniggered. Rhince glared. “Yer really was that bad!”

“They know it, Rhince; and ‘tis a tribute to their resilience – and, perhaps, our iron lungs – that they have learned.” Drinian paused, choosing his words with unwonted care.

On the maindeck nobody fidgeted or sighed. They looked up earnestly at their tall commander, his height emphasised by the flaring of a torch behind his right shoulder. “How well he manages them!” breathed Liliandil. Caspian squeezed her hand.

“They adore him, not that _he_ would guess it,” he agreed.

“Our fears, from that day onward, have been allayed,” Drinian began again, frowning. “By the diligence, courage and self-reliance every man of you has shown: through flat calms and raging storms; past sea serpents, krakens, exploding islands and the very End of the World. Though Rhince and I have both cursed you - begging the pardon of our passengers here – for a crowd of _contemptible damned lubbers_ , you have borne with it all, and grown into the finest crew a man-o’-war ever carried into dangerous waters.

“The rewards promised you by His Majesty have been richly earned. With them you have my admiration, and my gratitude, for that stout-heartedness, cheerfulness and seamanship that has brought us close, at last, to home. No captain ever commanded a finer crew: and, lest this be the last opportunity I have to say it, none was ever more proud of his shipmates than I. Dismissed.”

“Oh, _Ed!_ ” gasped Lucy, her little half-sob echoing around the silent vessel. “How _marvellous!_ ”

The men on the maindeck shuffled and murmured, but did not disperse, their lack of movement stopping Drinian mid-turn toward his passengers. Rynelf, ever the spokesman of the lower deck, cleared his throat, visibly embarrassed.

“By your leave, Sir,” he said, squinting against the strong light of the forward torches. “Us fellows have something we’d like to have said.”

Drinian cocked his head enquiringly. “As you choose, Rynelf,” he said mildly.

“Well, Sir, it’s just this. We know we was, to use the Mate here’s phrase, _a scurvy rotten excuse for a crew_ when we first came aboard – aye, even the few of us that had sailed before had scarce the seamanship of a Beaversdam river boatman! I’ll grant Rhince here this, he’s done his part...”

“Aye, bawlin’ and bellowin’ an’ usin’ up the baccy!” shouted Peridan good-naturedly. Rhince growled amiably.

“I does it well. Cap’n’ll tell yer!”

“None better,” Drinian agreed promptly. “The job of the Mate on any ship – seconded by the Boson – is to make the most noise and confusion in the name o’ _work_.”

“However,” Rynelf continued, looking (or perhaps it was the distorting effect of the torchlight, Edmund thought) more certain with every second, “if we _are_ become a crew to do Narnia credit Sir, we have you to thank for it. We have tried your tolerance...”

“And found it sorely wanting,” cut in Caspian, to uproarious laughter in which Drinian gladly joined.

“And caused you to cuss at our unseamanly ways,” the sailor finished earnestly. “But never for a moment have you turned from us in anger, Sir, and in every crisis you mentioned (and all the rest besides) we looked to survive with confidence, knowing we had you to lead us right. We are the crew you’ve made us, Captain: and we thank you, every man-jack of us, for it.”

“Too right!” shouted Erlian.

“Well spoken, Rynelf!” added Hofian, his deep bass trundling through the raw shouts of his fellows’ enthusiasm. Rhince pushed himself straight from his slouch against the mainmast, cupping his hands around his mouth.

“Right lads! Three cheers for our Cap’n!” he bawled. “Hip-hip!”

“Hooray!”

Lucy joined in the cheers, though her throat was tightened by tears at the expression of perfect astonishment on Drinian’s face. “He really doesn’t know how they love him,” she marvelled.

“A captain’s job is to be respected, not liked,” Edmund quoted. “Roldan always used to say that aboard the _Splendour Hyaline_ , Lu, do you remember? Though I doubt _his_ crew ever knew him half as well as these fellows know Drinian, given that we never got beyond the Roads of Narrowhaven in our day! It was awfully decent of you to say that to them,” he added as the scrum on the maindeck cleared, leaving the group on the fo’c’sle with peace to talk. “They really didn’t expect anything.”

“Sprang a fair surprise of their own, King Edmund,” Drinian retorted, as Caspian rolled his eyes. “They deserved to hear it said, mind. I had my doubts when we weighed anchor off Cair Paravel, but they _are_ become the best of crews, and sorry I shall be to lose a man of them to the land - at least now Pittencream’s run, the scurvy cur!”

“Has he no family in Narnia?” wondered Liliandil. 

“None that we could find, Ma’am.” Drinian leaned back against the taffrail, his head dropping back as he sucked in a deep, salty draught of late-night air. “Well, duty’s done, and we have a busy day tomorrow: I’m for my cot! We might hope to reach the castle before midday if this breeze holds firm. Goodnight, Your Majesties all.”

“’Night, Drinian.” From the moment the Dawn Treader had turned the dragon’s painted eyes west Lucy had longed for a glimpse of the graceful old castle. Now the hour was close, and her belly felt tight with a painfully nervous sense of dread.

_Let us stay here longer, Aslan!_ she implored silently. _Don’t tease us with a sight of Narnia just to send us home! Please, let us stay!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Written as a little tribute to the company of the Dawn Treader. We don't hear much of them in the book, but no voyage of that magnitude would be possible without a certain bond being forged between the Captain and his crew.


	17. Longest Hours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They've been at sea for months. A few more hours can't matter - can they?

Lucy and Liliandil slept very little that night, and it was with considerable relief that they heard Caspian’s pleasant voice outside their cabin at the first fiery glint of sunrise against the water beneath their sternport. “Wait for us!” Lucy called after him, letting the door swing shut behind them of its own accord and obligingly the boys halted, Edmund with his hand already on the poop hatch. Together, they clambered out into the pink-streaked peace of daybreak.

“See that over there, Your Majesties?” Rhince greeted them, lifting one meaty paw from the tiller to point. “That’s _Narnia_ , that is!”

“Can’t see it myself,” Eustace volunteered brightly. The Mate began a glare, caught the grin on the speaker’s face, and turned it into a healthy guffaw.

“You will, young feller, an’ soon enough! Cap’n’s for’ard, Your Majesty, makin’ sure the _‘ousekeepin’_ gets done.”

Lucy had no doubt the speaker would have preferred to be overseeing those myriad tasks himself and leaving his commander to occupy what was (usually) Drinian’s favourite place aboard. “We’m got to be spick-an’-span, the King’s ship, when we docks off the Cair, Your Majesties,” he added ruefully.

The entire galleon seemed to thrum with activity. On the fo’c’sle men rubbed with rough cloths at the brass rails until they shone; on the maindeck, under Drinian’s immediate supervision, one fellow sluiced the planking with water while two more scrubbed hard with friable sandstone blocks. Nearby another man whistled as he touched up the paintwork; and in the shade of the mainmast a whole knot of his shipmates polished away at every silver and enamelled shield, ready to have them hanging over the landward side at the sight of home.

And yet, though every man was contentedly occupied and the very air around them hummed with anticipation, there was no talking. People smiled toward the western horizon; hummed a snatch here and there of an old ballad; sighed. But nobody seemed to speak.

Which made the whiplash crack of Drinian’s occasional commands strike the ear even more forcibly than usual. “Let’s go down!” begged Lucy, her hand already curled around the polished post at the top of the poop ladder. “Goodness! It really _is_ our last day at sea!”

“That it is, Queen Lucy, and a perfect one at that.” Her clear voice had carried warning of their approach, and Drinian turned with a brilliant smile to greet them. “Here, Erlick! Take a cloth to the bands around the mast if you will. Aye, all the way to the fighting top.”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n!” The smallest man aboard sprang into the rigging, a rag tucked in beneath his chin. Guiding his passengers away from the area of greatest bustle, Drinian allowed himself a rueful chuckle.

“Did you ever see a ship’s company more enthusiastic for these mundane chores?” he wondered.

“I never before saw you abandon the helm to oversee them,” Caspian countered at once. His friend arched an inky brow.

“I’ll have her gleaming like a schooner back off a week’s coastal cruise before Cair Paravel comes into sight,” he promised. “Rynelf! Drag up the Lion, we want the creases blown out before it can be sighted from shore. Breakfast inside the hour, Your Majesties.”

“In other words: keep out of the way while the company works,” Caspian translated, more for the benefit of that company than his companions. “Are we permitted to loll untidily about the bows, Captain?”

“The deck’s been scrubbed and dried, Sire. Your Highnesses can do no damage there.”

“Charming!” exclaimed Edmund. Laughter rang the length of the ship.

And yet still it seemed to Eustace as the minutes crawled by that the workaday chatter (allowed by Drinian to speed the more tiresome duties on their way) was quelled. “Somehow, I thought it’d be different,” he said when the breakfast things were cleared, and the galley fire doused for the final time. “I imagined they’d all be singing and laughing and making a ruckus – with your permission, Drinian, of course. I simply never imagined it’d be so _quiet!_ ”

“Were this the last day of an ordinary voyage, it _would_ be as you say,” Drinian allowed easily. The ship was gleaming. The Golden Lion of the King’s personal standard flew proudly above the fighting top and the shields were hung out, a dazzling band along the landward length of the hull. The whole crew had been dismissed to change into the formal uniform (seldom seen at sea) of the Royal Narnian Fleet. Himself resplendent in the dark blue tunic edged and belted with gold of Lord High Admiral of the Realm, Drinian had leisure at last to lounge quietly with his friends at the point of the bow.

“’Tis no want of excitement that keeps the men subdued,” he said quietly. “More astonishment, I daresay, in knowing we _are_ so near our own shores after so long.”

“ _That_ sentiment I comprehend well enough,” Caspian confided, low-voiced. “There were moments – nay, even hours – during our adventures when I doubted to see this day myself.”

“Only hours?” asked Eustace, his mind roving back to the Island of Dreams; to invisible demons yelling blood-curdling threats; to sea serpents; Deathwater; and the endless, lonely days of dragon-hood. Caspian gave him a smart clip about the ear.

“For shame, Master Eustace!” he exclaimed. “With this fine ship and our valiant company, I should have been a capon indeed to long imagine us ever truly doomed! Oh! But why cannot my lady Dawn Treader pick up her skirts and _fly_ these last few short leagues home?”

“There’s not a man among us not wishing for that, Sire,” Drinian assured him comfortably. “These are every mariner’s most frustrating hours.”

“I’m sure I never saw you looking less _frustrated_ , Captain!” protested Lucy. He shrugged.

“There _is_ a certain pleasure for a captain in knowing a voyage is all but safely done,” he allowed.

“And done well,” added the Star’s Daughter, making her first contribution of the day. Drinian’s broad shoulders rolled.

“That’s for others to decide, not I! Now, if I have my calculations correct, we ought to come in sight of the castle just in time to delay my Lord Regent’s lunch.”

“I could be persuaded to think that purposely arranged, my Lord,” Caspian warned him mildly. Drinian flashed a guileless smile.

“Even the most skilled sailor cannot command wind and tide, Sire! If Purlian’s awake aloft, we might expect his hail within the hour.”

*

The lookout proved entirely alert, giving the news in an excited squawk that stopped all activity on deck and turned every eye ahead. “Land-ho! Land in sight!”

“Narnia!” breathed the King. “My Lords! Liliandil! Before you lies your own land!”

Drinian seized the telescope Lucy hadn’t even known he was guarding, haring to the mainmast and launching himself into the rigging before anyone could move to question. 

“After so many years, a moment more ought not to disquiet me,” murmured the burly Revelian, leading his old shipmates to join the royal party at the mast’s foot. “But – am I alone in knowing a certain… apprehension?”

“I should think hardly a man of us is quite serene,” Caspian soothed with perfect truth. Shielding his eyes, he stared up with the rest of them to the dark figure leaning precariously from the ropes beside the fluttering Lion standard. “Oh, why does he not _say_ something?”

As if he had heard, Drinian lowered his glass and began, steadily, to descend. With every man who could be spared from his station gathered to hear his words, he hopped down from the ratlines into an expectant huddle, straight-faced under their avid stares. “Hold her steady on this heading, Rhince,” he called.

The Mate’s broad, flat face split into a mammoth grin. Somebody choked off a sob. “We—” began the King helplessly.

“The bowsprit’s on course to enter Your Majesty’s breakfast chamber if we don’t look lively at mooring.” Had he not known their friend better, Edmund might have though those were tears bringing an onyx gloss to their Captain’s impossibly dark eyes. “Nay Sire, we stand too far off to discern the castle itself, but I know the line o’ these coasts as I do the glades of Etinsmere. A few more minutes and we’ll see it from deck, too.”

He offered his telescope to Caspian, firmly closing that gentleman’s limp fingers around its broad barrel. “Take station at the for’ard rail, Sire,” he said kindly. “Peridan! Run and fetch the spare glass from my cabin. Rhince, pass yours to Queen Lucy. Rynelf – Erlick... hang it! Who else brought his own telescope aboard?”

Half a dozen voices raised in answer; a dozen feet were set pattering into the belly of the ship in search of items more precious now than their weight in diamonds, while all the passengers and as many of the crew as could be spared tore for the fo’c’sle and the first distant glimpse of home. “I see it!” cried Lucy after what (to her less fortunate companions) felt like an hour of waiting. “Oh, _Ed!_ ”

“One can tell it’s _land_ ,” he said, screwing up his right eye against the cool rim of the spyglass. “But I’m blowed if I can make out anything more! Stand still, Scrubb! You’ll have Liliandil overboard if you keep _jigging about_ so!”

Slowly the misty smear crossing the horizon began to solidify, with first the contours, then the colours making themselves clear. Rounded hills to the south, their smoothness barely broken by woodland; steeper, more rugged slopes stretching north, shielding the Narnian interior from the worst of the weather’s sting. And there, speared by the bowsprit, a mere pebble at so great a distance and seemingly attached to the mainland, the rocky outcrop of Cair Paravel Island. Impossible to discern the castle’s flowing lines and gilded turrets at such range, yet they formed crystal clear in Lucy’s mind. 

_Home._

She was vaguely aware of voices around her. Not of speech, but of breathless murmurs and formless sighs. She let the telescope drop from her eye. “Oh!”

Minute by minute new features emerged, blessedly familiar, each one tugging at her heart. The Star’s Daughter stood rapt beside her, a single tear trickling down one perfect pale cheek. “You have told me Narnia is lovely,” she whispered, a blind grope with the hand somehow securing Caspian’s. “Yet somehow, I never guessed… Eustace, did you ever see a panorama more perfect?”

The only other newcomer to the country shook his head. Beyond him, hatchet-faced Argoz mopped at streaming eyes. “’Tis a sight I never thought to see again in this lifetime, Ma’am,” he growled.

“Your Majesties’ pardons all.” Venturing far had cured the shy Mavramorn of none of his lifelong prejudices. “But – do we not steer for the heart of what men call _the Black Woods?_ That fortress yonder…”

“The ancient heart of _true_ Narnia.” That he, in childhood, might have shared the man’s superstitious dread improved Caspian’s humour not a whit. “Seat of the Four Great Sovereigns, by name Cair Paravel. Left to decay by the ignorance and fear of our ancestors, you see it restored now by the Lion’s breath. And as to the phantoms supposed to inhabit those forests – what harm have they done Their Graces of Etinsmere, that have lived for generations beyond them, cut off from the heart of meek, _Telmarine_ Narnia?”

“Tirian was apt to call that barrier a boon,” Revelian remembered with a faint, fond smile toward his dead friend’s son. Drinian returned it with a touch of wistfulness.

“Indeed, my Lord, and I shan’t be the man to disagree with him! But you see already the truth of what His Majesty has said. You return to a Narnia very different from the one you knew.”

“It is at least a Narnia with no _Miraz_ in it,” said Argoz (who would never admit himself daunted by the prospect of sharing his land with animals who could talk and strange, half-human sprites with the lower halves of goats, among others) vehemently. “And one that accepts the rule of her right and lawful King! Your Majesty’s subjects _do_ acknowledge it?”

“I should hardly have abandoned my dominions in the grip of civil strife, my Lord,” said Caspian, amused. “By the Mane of Aslan! How could I have forgotten how magnificent Cair Paravel is?”

It seemed to Liliandil that while the eyes of most were fixed on the shining citadel atop its island bluff, one dark gaze was directed further north with all the intensity of desperation. “My Lord Drinian?” she questioned, just the tip of her long finger brushing his sleeve. He jumped fully half a foot off the deck.

“What ever is the matter?” cried Lucy.

“My apologies.” He wrenched his attention shipboard. “Lost in my thoughts,” he explained.

“And straining to sight the chimneypots of your hilltop home?” suggested Caspian sympathetically.

“Glenstorm does say, Sire, that the experience of exile makes one’s own lands the more dear.”

“The chief of our Centaurs,” Caspian explained quickly. “Quite renowned for his wisdom, a prophet and a seer, like all the greatest of his kind. But tell me, Drinian: ought not the lookouts Trumpkin pledged to place atop every turret have spied us by now?”

“They’re fit for naught but the lash and a leaking barrel if they’ve not, Sire.”

Caspian cocked his head. “A frank assessment! And what, I wonder, of the commander that posted such slackers?”

“’Tis Your Majesty’s prerogative to chastise my Lord Regent - and you’re welcome to it!”

“I should say so!” Edmund positively chortled. “You’ll like Trumpkin, Scrubb,” he added. “I never saw so much energy in such a confined space.”

“As well for Your Majesty that Sir Reepicheep is no longer on board,” cried Caspian, amid laughter.

“Excepting the Mouse, then. Oh, Lu, isn’t it wonderful to be back?”

Lucy couldn’t speak. In fact, confronted with all their finest dreams made real, neither could anyone else.


	18. Journey's End

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Celebrations, introductions and reunions. Is there anything else that could make the homecoming more perfect? The appearance of a certain Lion, for instance..

Unseen from the ship, a single figure raised itself upon the crenulated battlement around the north-eastern tower of Cair Paravel. Comet-like, sunlight flashed from the lens of the glass in its hand, spearing out across the waves. A voice lifted in an excited shout, and the figure disappeared.

“What’s that?” Eustace called, mere minutes later. “Ugh! There’s something _crawling_ on the beach!”

Lord Rhoop covered his face. “Even here they come for me!” he moaned.

“People! Lucy had guessed before Drinian could snatch his telescope to confirm it. “Caspian, we’ve been spotted! People – goodness, _hundreds_ of them – are running onto the beach to see you home!”

Not only people, she amended a moment later with the loan of Rhince’s glass to clarify the confusion on the hectic shore. Dwarves and Fauns; Naiads and Dryads; Beasts of every description, all mingled together with men and women; happy, laughing humans waving and cheering as flocks of swooping birds called and cawed above. Clustered thickest around the bridge connecting Cair Paravel with the mainland the throng spread south, all of Narnia in her holiday best, flocking from woodland glade and cosy hearth to see her King return.

“King’s trumpeter to the fighting top!” Drinian shouted. “Break out the Royal Banner!”

Beaming sailors sprang to his command. “Docking party, stand ready amidships!”

Rhince led the charge to a pair of iron braces secured to the bulwarks on either side of the retracted gangway, where coils of rope as thick as a strong man’s forearm lay ready to be unwound and cast ashore. “I say!” exclaimed Edmund. “There’s actually a _quay_ Lu, look, carved out of the cliff itself! That must’ve taken some work!”

“Two years o’ labour, King Edmund.” Drinian had supervised the construction of the galleon’s anchorage as closely as he had the laying of her keel. “His Majesty will step from deck to the island, up the steps, and address his subjects on the shore. As I did mention once (at least) before, preparation is everything.”

The cheers of those subjects quite drowned out Caspian’s mocking reply. The knots in Lucy’s stomach, part excitement and part (to her annoyance) pure fear, tightened with every breath. She longed to speak, to point out Faun, Centaur and Dryad to Eustace, whom she doubted had the remotest inkling of which was which, but her mouth was too dry. _Thank goodness it’s Caspian, not me, who has to make a dignified speech!_

Great pennants and streamers broke out from the castle’s glinting turrets; overhead she caught the slap and hiss of the King’s own standard of the Golden Lion breaking out to blow from the masthead. From the fighting top the golden fullness of a trumpet’s blare flowed, its undistorted call echoed by the tinny peal of bells from shore. Caspian lifted a hand in gracious acknowledgement of the first clear sound to stretch across a diminishing body of water. 

_Long live King Caspian! Aslan bless the King!_

“Come to the side,” he urged his friends eagerly. “Drinian…”

“The moment we’re safe docked and not before.” Lucy knew the water lapping the cliff’s base ran deep, but controlling a large vessel is close proximity to rock was a treacherous proposition for even the most skilled of mariners. “Sailmen, smartly there! Reef and furl! Rhince!”

“Ready ‘ere, Cap’n!”

“Lucy – Liliandil – boys – my Lords.” Caspian hustled them down the ladder to stand with him, square amidships at the gangplank’s end, ready to ascend the instant it crashed safely onto land. The Dawn Treader nosed before the freshening wind, sliding a fraction out of alignment. With the merest flick of the wheel, Drinian had the lurch arrested.

“Easy now,” he soothed, as if the wooden structure beneath his hands was truly alive. “Steadily, my lady!”

With a sigh lost beneath the shouts and applause ashore, the Royal Galleon nosed her way to rest in the channel precisely cut to fit her. Her gangway thudded down. And for the first time in almost two years, the royal foot of King Caspian X left its print in Narnian dust.

“Your Majesty!” There was Trumpkin, Lord Regent of the Realm, at the head of the rough-hewn stone stairway, eager to surrender his charge into its true master’s outstretched hand. Despite the euphoria of the moment, Caspian knew an instant’s sinking despair. 

_Farewell, freedom! Duty, etiquette and the constraints of a crown!_

“Soup and celery!” The Red Dwarf, kneeling to kiss the limp hand in his grasp, was near tears. “Glad am I to see Your Majesty safe home! You have been missed at every moment, Sire!”

“As have you, and all my faithful subjects.” Caspian hoped his pleasant tenor would carry all the way across the narrow channel separating his residence from the beach, briefly longing for the _iron lungs_ Drinian boasted of in a crisis, when the Captain’s commanding tones would echo through his ship from stem to stern. “My Lord Drinian!” he cried, raising the quivering Dwarf to his feet. “Lead our shipmates ashore! Let all see and be seen! Our great voyage of discovery is ended!”

The men flowed from the ship in a vibrant human stream. Clustering behind the royal party on the highest point of the island, just below the castle gates, they stared; pointed; waved to sweethearts weeping on the sand. Caspian cleared his throat.

And though they continued to stare and smile, the men stilled.

Somehow, Lucy didn’t think it was quite fair.

“Friends,” Caspian began slowly. “Many months have passed since last We stood in this place, bidding you be patient, faithful and of good cheer: for Aslan, our especial good lord, had sanctioned Our quest, and would stand guardian over Us and all Narnia throughout it. He has not failed us, and We may declare with confidence that the Men, Beasts, Dwarves and Fauns of Narnia have not failed him.

“We know, by the letters received at Galma from Our dauntless Regent Sir Trumpkin here, that this land has been peaceful, prosperous in Our absence. We give thanks to Our forbearing subjects; to the wisdom of Our Lords of Council remaining within the realm, Sir Cornelius and Sir Trufflehunter in particular; and above all to Sir Trumpkin, for that wisdom, discretion and prudence with which he has endured the burden of rule. In the future should we require instruction in the performance of Our kingly duty, We shall turn with confidence to the best of Dwarves.”

“Shouldn’t do that if I were you, Sire,” said the retiring regent promptly. “Whistles and whirligigs! The things I’ve been called these last few months! You’d not credit a King’s representative could be so abused!”

The attendant Councillors rolled their eyes, and Badger Trufflehunter rubbed a broad grey paw across his snout. “Your Majesty’s infrequent flares of _temper_ in the Council Chamber will never provoke reaction in us again, Sire,” he pledged.

“You’ll note one member of the Inner Council does not nod his head at that, my liege,” murmured Drinian.

“Objection noted, my Lord,” said Caspian with a grin.

“Our purpose in venturing into those uncharted seas,” he went on more loudly, “was not rashness, nor glory; nor any worldly vanity. It was to experience adventure, and to seek the fate of seven brave men, true adherents to their lawful lord Our late royal father King Caspian, Ninth of that name, banished to the waves long ago by the hatred of a murderous usurper. We must report now, with grievous regret, the deaths in circumstances never to be known of the Lords Octesian and Restimar; and we bid welcome with a full heart to their native shores my Lords Argoz, Mavramorn, Revelian and Rhoop. Step forth beside Us, gentlemen! Make yourselves known to your compatriots.”

It seemed to Eustace that the four long-lost Narnians were even more flummoxed by the variety of beings that shouted, brayed and squawked in welcome than Liliandil and himself, complete strangers to the kingdom. Lucy, he knew, would think it awful, but that knowledge comforted him hugely. 

“The Lord Bern, seventh and last of the usurper’s foes is, as known to you all,” Caspian yelled over the din, “safely resident at Narrowhaven, Our appointed Duke and Governor of the Lone Islands. Our endeavours to right the wrong done to honest men by a villainous tyrant have achieved success beyond all We dared to hope.”

The four Lords shuffled back, Revelian for once as shrinking as Rhoop, into the anonymity of the ships company, lost amongst men only too delighted to be stared at by the throng ashore. “Our quest,” Caspian continued, more confident with every sentence, “was blessed not merely with success, but with great pleasure. At Aslan’s choosing were sent the most honoured of all Our predecessors, sovereign over Narnia and Us. King Edmund; Queen Lucy. Your realm and all within it salute you.”

Eustace was sure he would never cease to marvel at the chance which came over the Pevensies when their titles were declaimed. They stepped forward confidently beyond Caspian and the Dwarf, their hands lifted in answer to an excited wave of cheering.

“With Their Majesties is come this gentlemen. Eustace, step forward! Let Narnia bid you welcome as I do!”

“Come _on,_ idiot!” grated Edmund.

“Don’t be so blasted _impatient!_ ” he muttered in answer, forced into motion by a pair of firm hands at the small of his back. He was quite certain he could pick out the spot where every individual curious eye pierced him. “Um – hello,” he managed.

“Master Eustace is kin to Their Majesties,” Caspian explained, taking pity on his unaccustomed shyness and stepping up to his side. “And has been our Our staunch friend and gallant shipmate beside them. It is Our privilege, friend, to welcome you at last to Our dominions.”

“Say _thank you_ , Eustace!”

“I – um – thank you, Your Majesty.”

From the smiles on every face, he rather gathered he had said the right thing. The next instant, with the Star’s Daughter being propelled forward by her fiance's glance, he was forgotten about.

“Lastly, We beg you all, for the love of Us, make welcome this worthiest of women: the Lady Liliandil, daughter to the Stars and the farthest sea, come from the Isle at the Beginning of the World’s End at Our ardent plea, to reside in Narnia, Our wife and Queen. Madam, before you I lay all that I possess. Make free with it: it is your own.”

There was no swell of cheering this time: only a gentle, awed murmur broken by the creaking of joints; all Narnia kneeling in homage before a tall, graceful girl. “If I dare speak for all Narnians, Ma’am,” said Trumpkin, rolling to plant his sturdy frame before her. “Bid thee heartily welcome, and Aslan bless Your Grace!”

“Aslan bless all Narnia, Sir, and make me worthy of her.” Liliandil returned his reverence with her own, bringing a whispery sigh from the crowd. The Narnians, Lucy could tell, were won over in the first moment by their new Queen.

“Now all introductions are done, there remains one last, proud duty We must perform.” Caspian diverted his steady gaze from the mainland back to the huddle behind him. “Shipmates – friends! Our quest has been long and fraught with peril yet, together, we have surmounted all to come safe home at last. Every man of you will have the reward in land and gold that was promised; further, to all your descendants, to Time’s very End, will you bequeath the golden title, Dawn Treader. In addition to so much, you have my undying admiration and thanks. As your Captain declared last evening – and he is a greater judge than I – there could be no finer crew than this.

“As to that Captain.” Not all his restored kingliness could keep the fond smile from Caspian’s face as he addressed his oldest friend. “My Lord Drinian. Though the proclamation of this quest was mine, its glorious completion owes more to you than to any other man. This ship; her crew; even the very mooring she rests in, are your creations.

“Last evening the men expressed their appreciation of your unceasing efforts in three lusty cheers. Allow now that I pay a tribute no less heartfelt. 

“The Dawn Treader would never have sailed beyond the edge of my imagination without your salt good sense to rein and guide me. We all who have sailed in her know she might have been wrecked a dozen times under a lesser mariner. _Thank you_ , old friend.”

Drinian bowed as the forgotten spectators cheered. “With Your Majesty’s permission?” he murmured, scrabbling (Lucy was sure) for something to do in defence against the faintly embarrassed surprise of the King’s earnest compliments. He jerked his dark head, and Caspian’s puzzled expression cleared.

“Oh! By all means, Captain!” he cried. Drinian turned a contemplative gaze on the motely body of seamen standing behind him.

“Ship’s company!” he bellowed, and though they were on land now, not really his ship’s company any more, they all leapt to attention. A faint, fond smile ghosted across the Captain’s face. “Disembark,” he instructed kindly.

Quietly, orderly, the crew filed past, saluting their Captain and bowing to their King before flooding across the drawbridge and onto the crowded beach. The throng parted and small groups of women, some with wide-eyed children clinging to their skirts, began to wash up like whitecaps foaming onto an empty shore. Voices raised.

“Oh _Ed!_ ” gasped Lucy, tears welling unexpectedly at the sight of thirty-odd ecstatic reunions spreading out across the sand. 

“All the anxious wives and fretful sweethearts,” he agreed, trying (and failing) to sound callous. “D’ you know, it never occurred to me that some of the chaps might have children – and look at Peridan with a whole little troupe of them! Astonishing that a fellow would risk all that on a chancy voyage into uncharted seas!”

“We made right an’ proper provision against the men not returning, Your Majesty,” Trumpkin pointed out, mightily affronted. “If the ship wasn’t home within two years, all the gold and land promised to the sailors was to go to the relation every man declared before sailing.”

“There’s more to family than material security, D.L.F!”

The Dwarf sniffed massively. “Wouldn’t know about that, King Edmund. Never having been tempted to settle, you know.”

“And we were quite confident even those provisions were needless; never doubting we should make landfall – as we have – well within those two years,” added Caspian. “Is that not so, Captain?”

“I don’t think he’s listening,” said the Star’s Daughter gently.

Caspian pushed up onto tiptoes, placing his mouth close to his best friend’s ear. “Drinian? Oh, what _is_ the use!”

“Down on shore,” said Lord Argoz, craning his scrawny neck, “I observe a maiden in the same state of trance as our shipmate. Perchance Your Majesty might identify her?”

“Oh!” Following the line indicated smacked Caspian’s bewildered stare straight into the upturned face of a pretty, slender girl whose tear-bright brown eyes appeared to be locked with Drinian’s.

“Daniela?” Lucy asked.

“The Lady of Glasswater,” Caspian affirmed.

“Awfully pretty, isn’t she?” 

The young woman on whom all eyes were now fixed remained blissfully oblivious to the attention she attracted, lost in a wordless exchange with her lover. Dressed in a simple cream linen gown, her dark chestnut hair caught back in a braid that hung to her waist, she was jostled and nudged by the excited melee, yet never lost either her balance or her connection with him. Drinian’s lips moved, but even Caspian, standing closest, heard no sound.

“Go,” he said, giving the taller man a gentle shove. Whether the action or the word propelled him he could never be sure, but a split second later the Mistress of Glasswater was moving too: steadily, confidently, with the dazed expression of a sleepwalker across her delicately-moulded face.

They met at the end of the drawbridge: hands extended, speech still unnecessary as the lightest brush of callused flesh on smooth sent shivers to the toes of both. Drinian lifted her fingers to his mouth.

Infinitely tender, the gesture was all it took to break the disbelieving haze, almost a mist, that wound itself around them. Drinian’s hands came to her waist; on a shriek of exultant laughter that sliced the babble around Daniela was swung high, her skirts falling like a giant butterfly’s wing as she spun around his head. For a moment he held her suspended, their faces mere inches apart; then, slow and smooth, he lowered her. Twin smiles vanished into a long, languid kiss.

“Come, we must introduce you!” Caspian seized his betrothed’s hand. Liliandil tugged him back.

“Give them but these few moments, Sire,” she chided, smiling as Drinian lowered his lady to her feet without breaking the kiss. “Allow that they exchange at least their first _words_ privately!”

The lovers drew apart, and though they were but one couple amongst many it seemed to Lucy they thought themselves entirely alone. Glasswater’s mistress brushed the bronzed cheek of Etinsmere’s lord. Her lips moved.

“There!” said Caspian with a heard-heartedness Lucy found inexplicable. “First words, you said! Now do come, you must be introduced _at once!_ ”

“’Tis true? You are not a dream this time?” The Lady of Glasswater had a low, lilting voice that turned her awestruck words to melody. Drinian pressed his mouth to her smooth brow.

“Does that feel unreal?”

“Nay: but many a dream has felt real, and another disappointment now…”

He cupped her bright face, using his thumbs to dry the tears that dripped from her high cheekbones. “I shall study never to disappoint you in any way, my soul,” he pledged huskily. Daniela linked her hands at his nape.

“So long as you still love me, my handsome Captain, you never shall.” She gave a press with the hands that guided his head down, stood on her toes and sealed her promise with a kiss. Lucy was certain she had never seen a man so blissful as Drinian when, at length, he was released. “Now, let me look at you!” Daniela commanded, pushing herself to arm’s length. Drinian returned her careful scrutiny in full.

“Lovelier even than I remembered,” he marvelled. Caspian coughed loudly.

For the briefest of moments, annoyance flashed across two faces. Then Drinian turned.

“You Majesties – Ma’am – Eustace. Allow that I present Daniela, Lady of Glasswater, to you.”

The guileless adoration he gave her name turned Lucy’s knees to water. “Goodness, how he loves her!” she whispered.

“Your Majesties.” First to her own King, then the rest of the party, Daniela curtsied. Caspian darted forward to raise her with a delicate hand.

“Forgive my impatience to make you known to all our friends,” he apologised, so naturally that both offended parties smiled, and Lucy quite forgot she had been annoyed. “We shall have ample time for everyone to become better acquainted after, but I must hear from your own lips, my dear Daniela: you are well? You have not permitted yourself undue anxiety in our absence?”

She had the merriest, most infectious giggle Eustace had ever heard. Amusement lit her from the inside, bringing sparks of molten gold into her misty brown eyes. “I fretted and feared fully five minutes each day from the hour the Dawn Treader sailed, Sire,” she replied, as if it were obvious. Her restless glance found Drinian’s again and stilled there, making Lucy wonder if she would ever have enough of gazing at him. “Told myself very sternly that my Captain would have me clapped in irons for such silliness, and continued about my business. You’ll not find a sweetheart in all Narnia that was more sensible with herself than I.”

“You have been well?”

“Aye.” Her hand sought and found his. “And have fulfilled my promise faithfully in watching my lord’s territories as diligently as I have my own. You’ll find Etinsmere in fine condition! The harvest was plentiful, and your people thrive. I took news of your being safe at Narrowhaven to Ellena myself, and _that_ , I fancy, has produced a marvellous softening in her resentment against answering to me as Mistress in time to come.”

“Soon to come, Aslan willing, and don’t concern yourself with my housekeeper’s affectations. Ellena,” he added, by way of explanation, “has managed Etinsmere to her own choosing since my mother and I fled. The prospect of a mistress arriving to _interfere_ with the running of things has not entirely delighted her.”

“Oh, she thinks me a wonder since I took your note to my Lord Regent from Glasswater for her inspection,” Daniela assured him, almost seriously. “Trumpkin could not have been kinder, Your Majesty. Almost the first thing he did when the schooner bearing your letters put in from Narrowhaven was to have a mule saddled and come to me.”

Drinian relinquished her hand just long enough to engulf the Dwarf’s in a vehement grip. “Thank you!” he said fervently.

“Naught to thank me for, m’Lord, and her Ladyship was so kind as to let the rest o’ the women know.”

“Thus sparing my Lord Regent many an emotional scene,” Daniela finished drily. The stocky little man gaped.

“Kettles and kingfishers! I never knew my motives were so obvious!” he stammered. Everyone laughed.

“Never think to deceive my Lady of Glasswater,” Drinian advised him cheerfully. “It was a kindness, nonetheless, to inform the ladies.”

“I should have proved myself unworthy of the Captain’s heart, had I showed less sympathy with poor creatures in my own predicament than he would for their men.”

Caspian positively beamed at the sentiment. “Come within the castle, one and all – Daniela, will you adjourn with us and hear something of our adventures?” he asked, barely waiting for her nod before hurrying on. “Trumpkin! Have the remainder of the week proclaimed a holiday. We shall have a ball at Cair Paravel – yes, and a night of dancing at the Lawn. And then, we must begin to make plans for two marriages – aye, and a coronation, at that!”

Drinian buried his face in the silken softness of his lady’s hair. “Lion bless me!” he exclaimed. “Delay the holiday until that’s done, if Your Majesty has any compassion for your poor Council! Our nerves will be in tatters by the end of it!”

The King opened his mouth to protest, but the touch of warmed, golden air on his tongue was enough to still the impertinent frippery of speech. Lucy breathed deeply of its strange radiance, knowing without a look around that every other being on the foreshore was doing the same.

Though the babble of noise had stilled sound still rang, bell-like, against every ear; a sound that thrummed from the glowing air itself. _Aslan_

Lucy was sure she had not breathed the name; she didn’t recognise the voice as belonging to any of her companions. But it hung in the breeze, a solid, presence, just like the great beast padding, his tawny back dappled with shade, from the woods which backed the shore. Everyone knelt, mindless of the damp sand clinging to their knees as, stately, the Lion passed through.

Lucy didn’t see him sway to avoid people, and she was positive none of the Narnians shuffled from his path; the stillness was too complete for that. Yet he moved arrow-straight and sure through the melee until he stood, big as a carthorse and golden, drawing all the sun’s radiance to himself, on clear sand.

“Caspian, King of Narnia,” he said, the lowest rumble (almost a purr, Lucy always thought) of his deep voice thrumming off the skin. “Approach.”

The King obeyed, walking the short distance with head bowed before sinking once more to his knees before the Highest of High Kings. Aslan brought a heavy velvet paw to his shoulder.

“Rejoice in your return, Son of Adam,” he said, “And never shirk from the great task before you. Once a King of Narnia, always a King of Narnia, no matter how far from her borders you may be.”

“I will not fail for want of effort, my Lord.” Lion-ish strength surged through his blood. Caspian lifted a bright, determined face. _How could I have even thought of abandoning my own?_

“You say well.” The Lion had heard the thought, Caspian was sure of it. “King Edmund; Queen Lucy. Draw near.”

Fearlessly they came forward, steady in holding his bottomless amber stare. “Oh, Aslan!” gasped Lucy. “You’ve not come to send us home already, have you?”

“Nay, Queen Lucy.” He dipped his great head, the scent and softness of his mane a promise. “Your presence is a boon to Narnia at any time. You shall stay a little while yet.”

“Thank you, Sir!” said Edmund fervently. The Lion gave him a solemn look.

Then he turned again, the small movement making every powerful muscle of his neck and back ripple. “Eustace.”

There was no menace in the word, but the boy still felt all the terrible awe of their first encounter back on Dragon Island. He shuffled on his knees, carving deep gashes in the sand to be washed clean by the next tide. Aslan’s little growl sounded suspiciously like a laugh.

“Look up, Son of Adam,” he said, waiting for Eustace to obey, tentative, before going on. “You are a stranger in this land, which time immemorial has welcomed strangers. Be worthy of it!”

“I – I’ll try my best, Sir.”

“None of Adam’s heirs can promise fairer.” As Eustace released the breath he hadn’t realised he was holding, Lucy reached to give his hand a reassuring squeeze. 

“Drinian, Lord of Etinsmere.” The Lion turned his attention to one never before called into his presence. “Come close.”

Caspian could not resist taking a peek aside. The first time he had been called, his knees had knocked together so badly he still wondered how he had walked the short distance without falling over. How did Drinian bear the delicious ordeal?

With a serious expression and a steady step that quite belied the knot of tension in his belly, he came forward and knelt close to Eustace. Aslan growled gently again.

“You have done well, Son of Adam,” he said, bringing a smile of startled pleasure to the young sailor’s face. “Remember always, as you have this journey: a faithful friend is a greater boon to kings than the most obedient subject.”

“My Lord.” The truth of the words echoed in the ears of sovereign and subject alike. The Lion sighed deeply, his sweet, strong breath washing warmly over the five faces before him. 

“Rise up, Sons of Adam. Rise, Daughter of Eve,” he said, lifting his voice until it rebounded from wood and stone and seemed to shimmer on the glittering crest of every incoming wave. “Narnia has her King returned. Let her rejoice as he has commanded her! Let her gather all her strength for the days of trial to come. Blessings upon her!”

And then, though nobody saw quite how, he was gone.

Blinking, like sleepers shaken awake, everyone climbed to his (or her) feet.

“Our homecoming,” declared Caspian, rubbing his eyes, “could not have been more highly blessed.”

“Can’t say I much like the bit about _days of trial to come_ , Your Majesties,” observed Trumpkin.

“It did sound a touch _ominous_ ,” agreed Edmund. Drinian arched an ebony brow.

“May have been naught more than a reference to the trials of planning and organisation we have ahead, King Edmund,” he joked, buoyed up by the confidence only a first encounter with the Lion could bestow. “He knows the trouble we shall have getting the King o’ Narnia to decide the smallest detail of the ceremonies we have to manage!”

Laughing, protesting, Caspian led his party back up the drawbridge’s steep slope and into his graceful castle’s heart, the heavy iron gates swinging shut to mute the uproarious sounds of excitement from the mainland. Lucy gazed up at the gleaming, ivy-clad walls surrounding them, sweet peace filling her swelling heart. “It is,” she murmured, happy tears filling her eyes and splashing onto her glowing cheeks. “it really _is_ wonderful to be home!”


End file.
